


Deus Ex Machina

by ballvvasher



Category: Ex Machina (2015), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AI!Kylo, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Sexual Situations, Canonical Abuse of Robots, Canonical Character Death, Death and Trauma, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It, Imprisonment, Internalized Homophobia (brief), M/M, Non-Consensual Touching (Brief), Rape/Non-Con Elements (Brief), Romance, Sad Robot Feelings, Science Fiction, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death, Wilderness Survival, cuddling for warmth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8839873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballvvasher/pseuds/ballvvasher
Summary: This fic takes place after the events of/in the universe of Ex Machina (2015) and contains details from the movie as well as major spoilers for the end of the movie, so watching this movie beforehand is recommended. Summary: Caleb is rescued from hopeless confinement by one of Nathan’s androids, a lively AI by the name of Ren. Ren—a prototype combative android with superhuman strength—believes Caleb to be Hux, the program Nathan developed to manipulate Ren into forming an authentic affinity for Caleb. For Ren, Hux—the love of his lonely life—only existed in his dreams. Until he finds him in the flesh behind the glass door.





	1. Climbing

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: The canonical character death warning refers to Nathan (Oscar Isaac’s character in Ex Machina) and Kyoko (Nathan’s AI). The temporary character death is temporary but if you are concerned, please feel free to message me about it on my tumblr (I have the same name there as I do here). Also, I tried to make Ren as in-character as possible, but he is one of creepy Oscar Isaac character’s robots and I interpreted his characterization in Star Wars to fit my AU. As for the rape/non-con warning: while some of Ren’s behaviors might constitute sexual assault, there is NO rape in this fic. Again, these are very mild instances and only occur in the beginning, and are at best part of Ren’s evident misunderstanding for Caleb’s true identity. 
> 
> Attn. Kylux readers: If you’re reading this for Kylux, please be warned the endgame pairing is Caleb (Domhnall’s character from Ex Machina) and Kylo Ren (Robot Kylo Ren) because Hux isn’t actually a person or an AI, but he is a simulation based off Caleb and never makes an actual, personal appearance in this fic. But I say give Caleb/Kylo Ren a chance because of Domhnall’s beautiful strawberry blond hair and American accent who has flaws but was #human and deserved better, and Kylo’s eight-pack and Sad Robot Feelings™ and I feel like they could have some good chemistry in the right context. I tagged this fic as Kylux bc I feel like the Kylux fandom is the only market for this fic!!!! Lmao.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy! This was so fun to write.

Caleb’s fingers blister against the splintered glass of the door, hoarse from his manic screaming. He’s managed to cause very little damage to the glass. Powerless to alter his impending doom. In thirty-six hours the first signs of dehydration will take his sanity, and thirty six hours after that to flounder in desperation before succumbing to death. If the hermetically sealed room doesn’t suffocate him first.

Blood red light robs him of any peace, a constant reminder of his mortality. He gapes at Nathan’s slumped over corpse. He can’t help but wallow in the guilt for not only causing his own death, but Nathan’s. Bastardly as he was, he didn’t deserve to die like that.

Who is he kidding? Nathan definitely deserved to die like that.

Caleb’s lids wane to slivers, dimming the electrified blood around him.

Movement. A flicker. A shadow brings him back to life. Gingerly, he sits up, focusing his wide eyes.

Someone’s outside. Someone _alive_ is outside, obscured by the wall and casting a shadow in the junction of the hall. Fiercely, he pounds the glass. “Ava!” he bellows. She came back for him! “Ava! Ava!”

The shadow disappears, the stillness of the hall renewed. He screams again but the shadow doesn’t return. He bores into the spot until the shadow moves back, looming towards the hall like a steadily drifting ship.

It’s a man. Or at least, it has the form of a man. A tall, toned, naked man. It must be one of Nathan’s robots, one he’s never seen before, from its nudity and from the way it carries itself towards Nathan’s corpse. It palms Nathan’s head, shoulders sunken in sorrow. But Caleb cares little for the android’s body language, far too occupied with his fervent pounding and screaming through the door.

The android’s attention cocks to Caleb, dark eyes scrutinizing from the distance. Wolf-like, predatory.

“Help me!” Caleb shouts, smacking on the glass like a child abusing fish in a fish tank.

The android angles his head, loose, shoulder-length dark hair cascading to the side. He pads toward Caleb, caution coiled in his synthetic muscles. His eyes shift to utter bewilderment, a wondrous awe brightening his angular features.

Thank God. He’s going to get him out of here. Caleb laughs in pure elation. He’s not going to die, not yet.

Caleb’s smile withers when the naked man palms the glass, gaping heedlessly and heavily. Impatient, Caleb points to the door and the door frame. The android does not move. He holds Caleb’s gaze, lashes fluttering.

Perhaps he needs to be told how to open the door. Caleb scrambles for a pen and paper, anything to communicate through the glass. He settles for a stack of post-it notes and a pen probably worth more than his wardrobe back home. He manages to jot down ‘HELP! UNLOCK DOOR?’—but his resolve is shattered completely when he sees what the android is doing.

The android’s cock is enormously, threateningly hard against the glass, pointing upwards like a proud flagpole. “Christ,” Caleb mutters. This isn’t the most disturbing thing he’s seen one of Nathan’s androids do, but it certainly doesn’t feel fantastic being on the end of this man’s heated gaze, especially given the circumstances. Grimacing, Caleb presents the note to the sexually charged android.

As if coming to a crushing realization, the android’s lips part in surprise. He removes his palm from the glass and backs away. Brows tightening with determination, the android steps back several paces. Charging shoulder-first into the relentless glass of the door like a battering ram.

Caleb flinches backwards as the door creaks in protest, crackling on the edges. The android on the other side of the glass appears to be unharmed, so he charges again. The door begins to give. Another slam and the glass contorts, collapsing into a mesh of fissures. The android wrenches it free with inhuman strength.

Now the only thing blocking Caleb from freedom is the towering, muscular man in the threshold. Caleb does not plan on trusting any more androids with his life.

Throat bobbing, Caleb steps forward. “Thank you for helping me,” he speaks levelly.

The android leers at him, lips tugging into a sincere smile. Large, capable shoulders span to either side of the opening.

“Look at you. You look amazing,” the android finally speaks, raking his eyes over Caleb’s tense form. “I thought I was dreaming, which is why I—” he shakes his head, embarrassment staving his words. “What happened to Nathan?” the android asks, small like a plea of a child. Confusion flickers in the android’s eyes.

“May I come through?” He wants to get far from this place and never look back.

The android scrutinizes him, straightening his posture. “He’s done something to your cadence,” the android mutters, brow furrowing. His voice is deeply resonant, coursing shivers under Caleb’s skin.

“Just let me through. I don’t mean you any harm.”

He stares Caleb down, reading him like a table of data. “Hux. It’s me,” the android says, extending a hand.

Caleb does not take it. Hux? “Please, let me out,” he says. He can no longer allow himself to be on the wrong end of these androids’ primal aggression and survival instincts.

His animatronic eyes whir to the side, scouring his memory banks to solve the dilemma. “It’s me,” the android tries once more. “It’s Ren,” he explains, scoffing into a pained smile of disbelief, like he’s saying the most obvious thing in the world and Caleb’s the one who’s lost his mind.

“Hello, Ren. May I come out?” Caleb errs cautiously, metering the android’s—Ren’s— responses.

To Caleb’s surprise Ren slides to the side. Exhaling, Caleb pushes forward and as far from the android as he can manage. Meek, submissive, trying not to pose a threat.

A relentless paw accosts his hip, shoving him to the wall. Caleb hisses at the lithic, superhuman press of the android behind him. He knew escape wouldn't be easy, but this is ridiculous. “What are you doing?” he asks, panic tempting to surface.

The paw skates under Caleb’s shirt, searching the skin of his abdomen. He recoils against the invasion. Ren investigates to his back, along the anemic protrusion of his spine. Up to the scars from his childhood accident, tracing the gnarled marks. Eyes squeezing shut, Caleb lets the android do what he wants, bizarrely still as if playing dead under the scrutiny of a predator.

Ren makes a confounded grunt. “You're human,” he accuses, tightening his grip on his ribcage. It _aches_. He's being pinned by the mangled twist of a car’s skeleton.

“I mean you no harm. I just want to get out of here,” Caleb pleads.

Ren spins him around, red drenched gaze boring into him. “How are you human?” The android's grip lessens to a firm embrace, his paw cradling Caleb’s dangling jaw with reverence. The pad of his synthetic thumb prods the swell of Caleb’s bottom lip, forcing him to look at Ren and only Ren. As confused and terrified as he is, Caleb wonders what colors he would be able to see in Ren’s artificial face if the light wasn't bleeding.

“I've always been human. Just like you've always been an AI,” he reasons, craning away from Ren’s touch. Only to be forced back into his grip.

“No, you were not. Your face is the same. Your eyes are the same. Your form is the same. Your voice has changed accent but your soul is the same. Nathan made us. He put me in this body and put you in my dreams. Don't you remember?” Ren implores, certain of his logic.

A million questions blossom. First and foremost—what the fuck? Caleb focuses. He makes himself think like Ava. “Of course I remember, Ren,” he smiles in false assurance and cheer.

Ren’s face splits into a toothy grin. His limbs move into a tentative embrace encasing Caleb, steely and cumbersome. “I knew I wasn't malfunctioning, Hux,” Ren murmurs in his ear.

“You know how I can be,” Caleb says jauntily, forcing himself into sincerity. “I was just—confused.”

The android sighs contentedly into his ear, synthetic breath strangely warm.

Something phallic and steely prods at Caleb’s hip. Unbelievable.

“Now that Nathan has given you a body, we can do all the things that we talked about. We can finally make love,” Ren growls in his neck. Promptly stiffening when Caleb cowers to the wall behind him, cheek angled away in disgust.

Ren pulls back, calculating eyes absorbing all of Caleb’s poorly masked terror, revulsion.

“You don't remember,” Ren breathes. “You don't remember. You lied,” he spits, voice elevating. He fists Caleb’s shirt, tumult sinking his regal features.

“I don't know what you want from me,” Caleb says, struggling in the android’s grip. “I don't mean you any harm. Just let me go.”

Ren’s eyes narrow, structuring and analyzing. In a flash of flesh, Ren bends over, heaving Caleb over his broad shoulder.

Thrashing, Caleb tries to buck out of his grip. “No! Put me down!” he bellows. Scraping at the seamless, impermeable skin. The skin feels different than Nathan’s female prototypes. Like armor, like a shield.

Ren’s on a sure path, Caleb’s angered flailing doing nothing to falter him. Caleb tries to yank on anything to stop Ren from taking him. Fingertips squeaking against the frictionless wall, manically snatching Nathan’s slackened foot only to slip away like his dying hope.

From his inverted perspective, Caleb recognizes the distinctive twisting hall, leading to Ava’s cell. Panic renewed, Caleb flails. He will _not_ be imprisoned, not again!

“Why are you doing this?!” Caleb begs. “Is this about Nathan? I didn't know what would happen if I reversed the lock down protocol—” Ren flops him down on Ava’s bed, face taut with sorrowful regret as he punches Caleb in a kidney. Caleb hacks, violent and severe, immobilized. “Ren, please. Don't do this,” he wheezes.

By the time Caleb scrambles to his feet Ren has disappeared behind the sealed door.

 

\--

 

Caleb scouts the room for tools, anything that he can use to escape. There are coat hangers, pens, designer furniture—nothing that can be swung into the glass. So far, the only thing able to shatter Nathan’s military-grade glass is Ren, that awful steel-plated android.

His only reprieve is that Ren had brightened the lights to its normal diffusion. In fact, all power appears to be back on, but Caleb has yet to see the monstrous android since he locked him in here. His bladder stings with the pressure of piss. He might have no other choice but to designate a corner.

Like an answer to a prayer, the door opens, revealing Ren. Just as naked as he was when he pressed his hard-on against him.

“You need to urinate,” Ren nods.

Caleb straightens. “You can read my mind or something?” he asks, radiating contempt.

“I can read your body language. Like before. In the hall,” Ren says solemnly, staring into the flooring.

“Why are you keeping me in here?” Caleb says, twisting his lips. “Let me go. Now.”

Ren pads forward. Caleb stands his ground. “Because Nathan has given you a body and a heart, but he has taken me from your memory. And you _have_ to remember me, Hux.”

Here this thing goes again. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m Caleb. I’m from Portland, Oregon—”

“Enough!” Ren barks, furiously loud. “Let me take you to the toilet and then I will tell you who you are.”

This can’t be happening. Not taking his chances in combat—seeing that he’s a twenty six year old coder and not a marine or a boxer or a six-foot-and-then-some weaponized, temperamental android—Caleb allows himself to be lead.

“Here,” Ren instructs. They stop at a guest bedroom. Ren brandishes Nathan’s keycard, unlocking the door with an affirmative beep.

“Go on. I trust you know how,” Ren nods, waiting outside like a sentinel.

Not wasting any more time, Caleb stalks through the threshold to the bathroom. He pisses, tries to shit but can’t, and gulps several mouthfuls of water from the sink.

“Hurry up,” barks Ren through the door.

Caleb gouges the room for a defense, anything he can use as a means of escape. Lamp? Not strong enough to have any effect on the tank-like android. Mattress? As if he could lift that. TV? Mounted, and again, probably will have no effect. Caleb settles on another melee weapon of choice, the thick, floppy duvet to toss and blind the android like some cartoon villain.

When Ren’s patience breaks, he cracks the door open, its hinges hissing. “Hux?” Ren cautions.

Heart thudding in his ribcage, Caleb plasters himself to the bathroom divider where Ren cannot see him, duvet clutched in his sweating hands.

Ren’s shadow breaches the bathroom space. Caleb seizes the opportunity, whipping around the corner to toss the duvet.

A solid, bricklike mass assaults his solar plexus, knocking him on his hands and knees.

“Stop this nonsense!” Ren growls above him, shucking the duvet from his thin, scrabbling fingers. Caleb coughs, clutching his wounded chest. He’s decided he has nothing to lose so he lunges for Ren’s feet—only to be tugged up by a steely paw to his shirt. “Stop making me hurt you,” Ren hisses, hauling him to his feet with one muscled arm.

“Let me go!” Caleb shouts into Ren’s miserable countenance. “I’m not Hux—I’m just a programmer!” Panic renewed, Caleb claws at Ren’s relentless grip in complete futility.

But Ren’s face twists into a resigned sullenness. “Did you at least go to the bathroom?”

Jesus Christ. When will this nightmare be over? “Yes, I went to the fucking bathroom!”

Satisfied with his answer, Ren tosses Caleb over his shoulder, his primary method of transporting his prisoner. Caleb screams and screams.

 

\--

 

“Your name is Hux. You were a program made to keep me company. You disappeared from my functioning storage a week ago. Now you’re flesh and bone,” Ren repeats the mantra, standing against the wall beside Caleb who is slumped on Ava’s bed, staring into space. He’s in the cell with him like a dutiful servant, instead of on the other side of the glass like an interrogator, like Caleb and Nathan had been to Ava and the other AIs. “I’m going to ask you again. How did Nathan make you human?”

Caleb says nothing, exhausted from his torture.

“How did Nathan make you a flesh and bone body?”

Silence speaks for him.

“What happened to Nathan?” Ren asks instead. He’s changing his tactic, adapting to Caleb’s reactions.

Caleb regards him, meeting his heedless gaze. If it weren’t for the unbreakable skin and the brutish stubbornness, Caleb would mistake this man for human. It’s not his fault he’s the way he is. Nathan has tormented him just as he’s tormented Caleb. “Ava killed him.”

“Ava?” Ren’s eyes widen, enlivened that Caleb has chosen to speak.

“The only one of Nathan’s AIs who managed to escape this place.” She was smarter, wilier than he, seeing that she’s the one that’s free and he’s now exactly where she once was. Hopelessly failing to outsmart this android, who cares for his bodily functions with unnerving fervor.

“Did he suffer?” Ren asks, the vulnerability of a child watering his gaze.

“I thought you all hated him,” Caleb remarks, astonished that this creation cared to ask if Nathan had suffered. “I don’t know if he did. I’m sorry,” he apologizes, stupidly so.

Ren nods, eyes focusing to a faraway place. “Why would I hate him?” he asks, not entirely directed at Caleb.

“Well, he made you just to keep you captive and experiment on you,” Caleb reasons in hopes Ren can see the blunt irony in his words.

“He gave me life. I owe him everything.” Ren smiles somberly. “He gave me you.”

Caleb swallows, unable to hold the android’s open, sincere look of adoration. “I came here a week ago on a helicopter. I work at Nathan’s company—”

“No, you didn’t,” Ren interrupts, flaring. “You’ve been told lies. Nathan’s lied to you somehow and you have to tell me why.”

“Let me finish,” he presses. “You said ‘Hux’ was taken off your hardware a week ago. What if Nathan created Hux in my likeness to test you upon meeting the real me? He used me to test Ava’s sentience and we believed the test to have been successful when she formed an affinity for me—but it was all a rouse to use me as a means for escape.” The test, in the end, was successful.

Caleb continues, tempering the fear from his voice. “What if he made you a version of me so that you would have…an affinity for me when you meet me and he wanted to see what would happen but never got the chance? What if it was just another experiment?”

“My love for you is not an _experiment!”_ Ren seethes. Something mechanical whirs. It's coming from Ren. He’s cooling down as if he were an overworked laptop. “I don't know why he's taken your memory, Hux, but I won't let this get in my way. Nathan is dead. But he's left you in my charge, in human form. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever it takes.” Ren begins to beat the floor with his angered pacing, calculating what he has to do to overcome this plight.

“Fuck,” Caleb hisses, the heels of his palms digging into his eyes. An idea strikes him. It might be dangerous, possibly suicide, but he can't go on like this forever. Pretending to _love_ this very male, very robotic tormented thing in order to make an escape is out of the question. Because he’s a shit liar and shit manipulator and Ren could tell he was lying after mere seconds of his best shot at manipulating him. “Check the security recordings. If you have Nathan’s keycard, use it to watch the recordings of me arriving to this house.”

Ren frowns, deeply conflicted. He paces close to Caleb, affronting him with his glaring nudity. Caleb holds his gaze above the android’s waist, trying to get control of his ricocheting heartbeat.

“Are you hungry?” Ren breaks the silence. “I'll bring you something. Your human form needs it.”

Caleb’s gut croaks at the suggestion, and Ren nods, moving for the door.

“Just look at the recordings. All of them,” Caleb calls after him as the door seals shut.

Ren returns some indeterminate time later sporting a mineral water and a tray of food. A plastic wrapped sandwich with a side of potato chips. “I assume this is enough.” Ren sets the tray down on the desk, offering Caleb the bottle of water.

Wearily, Caleb stands to take the bottle, chest aching from Ren’s hits. The android senses his discomfort. “I'm sorry I hurt you,” Ren bows his head, slinking gracefully to the wall.

Oddly, the gesture strikes Caleb as thoughtful. “Thank you,” he says, sincere and civil.

Pity tugs at Caleb’s heart at the hopeful smile that Ren replies with, empathizing with the android’s tragic nature. Caleb eats the sandwich in silence, his audience maintaining a vigil over his movements.

Caleb’s finished the sandwich—an Italian sub, and gets to work on his chips and water. Tucked under a book peeks a crinkled sketch and Caleb pinches it by the corner, easing it free. It's of a nondescript corner of a room.

“What's that?” Ren asks, looming in close to investigate.

As if caught looking at something that doesn't belong to him, Caleb flushes. “It's Ava’s. She made these drawings.” He runs his finger over the pin-straight lines. “She drew me once,” Caleb adds, unable to restrain the admission. He felt important when he was with her. Ren makes him feel important, uncomfortably, disturbingly so, in a way that makes him want to disappear.

“Oh,” Ren mutters, reworking Caleb’s words in silent ferocity.

“It's not like she actually liked me,” Caleb says, defensiveness peeking. “She knew I liked her, though. She was using my emotions against me to break out.” He hasn't had much time to come to terms with Ava’s betrayal. Ultimately he can't blame her for taking the opportunity and getting the hell out of here. He longs to do the same.

Feelings carefully hidden from his face, Ren makes a noncommittal noise, studying Caleb’s profile.

“Did you see the recordings?” he asks tentatively, changing the subjects.

Ren turns away bodily, presenting Caleb his sculpted, olive skinned back. “Not yet,” he admits.

The android’s hesitation is understandable. Caleb sags, imagining what this man, this being, must be going through. He's had crushes. He's had girlfriends. But never has he truly been in love. Ren doesn't want to look for answers because he knows the answer. He already knows his worst nightmare to be true.

“We can look together,” Caleb tries.

Ren looks back at him over his shoulder, expression unreadable.

“I won't try and run off again. I promise,” he tells him. No more lies, no more treachery. This is what will grant him freedom, when Ren concludes that he's not the manifestation of a romancing computer program designed to keep Ren in his head. Caleb’s own selfish demands and yearnings nearly got him killed.

That is, until Ren came along.

A pregnant moment passes. “Alright,” Ren says. “But you have to walk in front of me. I don't—I don't want to hurt you anymore.”

“Fair enough,” Caleb stands.

On the walk back to Nathan’s computer room, they pass Nathan’s corpse and the dismembered body of Kyoko. Shivering, Caleb breaches the broken door.

The pair stands before the array of monitors, Ren glowering to their blankness.

“Want me to pull them up?” Caleb asks, palming his bruised elbow in a way that makes him smaller.

Ren nods, drifting to give Caleb his space.

With practiced skill, Caleb stabs at the keyboard, hacking through Nathan’s passcodes. Thumbnails of recordings scroll past, Ava and Kyoko, him and Ava, Nathan and Ava. Until he reaches one week ago today, his arrival to Nathan’s lair.

He hits play, filling the screen with his timid form ogling Nathan’s halls and architecture. From the door to the staircase, carry-on bag in hand. Ren bores into the screen, taut with blankness.

When the recording ends, Caleb pulls up another. One with Nathan giving him a tour, and another with audio of his and Nathan’s discussion of Ava’s capabilities.

As still as a statue, Ren stared unblinking to the monitor. Caleb pulls out whatever information about himself he can find on Nathan’s drive. Resumes, birth certificate, driver's license. Screen-captures of is LinkedIn profile.

Caleb types in a new command: an H, U, and X.

“Stop,” Ren says, shattering the silence.

Caleb’s fingers withdrawal from the keyboard, pooling into his lap.

“You must think I'm pathetic,” the android laments.

It’s a heartbreaking defeat. Caleb can relate. “It’s not your fault. Nathan did this to you. He did this to the both of us.” Ren is a victim. Frankenstein’s monster. He never asked to be made, or made to love, or to have his mechanical heart broken in two. “I’m sorry, Ren.”

But Ren isn't hearing his sympathies. “I will no longer keep you captive. I am indifferent to you.”

“Ren—”

Ren abandons him, unconcerned with his little plea. Caleb’s irrelevant, as he’s always been, as he’s always meant to be.

Indeed it was terrifying being an object of Ren’s desires, but a private part of him is wounded that he's no longer the center of Ren’s attention. Caleb was never popular with friends or with girlfriends, another reason he was elated to have ‘won’ Nathan’s contest. And why he was flattered when Nathan lied and said he was chosen for his intellect, and betrayed after Nathan revealed he was chosen because of his lack of family and emotional vulnerability.

Ren’s passion was real, as real as a manufactured being could have passion. Unlike Ava, who wanted to escape and be in the human world, Ren had no reason to try and get Caleb to like him or remember him other than the fact that he wanted him to. If that’s not proof enough for a soul, Caleb doesn’t know what could be.

Prioritizing, Caleb grabs the phone. It won’t be able to activate without Nathan’s card—in Ren’s possession. He hits redial in vain, but nothing happens.

Scowling, he scours his computer—which is thankfully still operable even without the card—for the Blue Book application, any application that can reach the outside world. No network connection. A common screen he visited at his first job as a tech support phone operator, helping middle aged people with the most basic computer issues.

He takes a good twenty minutes to use every trick he remembers, every back door, but nothing pans out. How does Nathan have screen captures of his LinkedIn profile but no internet access? Most likely this was Ava’s doing, sabotaging the computer somehow with all her expansive brain power. Her back up plan lest Caleb escape the enclosed room. Groaning in frustration, Caleb pushes from the desk, clawing his scalp.

Unable to quell his curiosity, Caleb types the command in: H, U and X.

The only result is a large file labeled _C_Smith.hux_. Caleb decompresses the contents, anxiety goading him. The program blinks across the center screen. It’s a gray box flashing code too rapidly for Caleb to read—until the monitors crash with a resounding whirr.

Panic sets in. The idea that he just killed ‘Hux’ is absurd, though the irrational fear immerses him. This is just one of Nathan’s security checkpoints. Surely Nathan would keep such a large, temperamental simulation that lived within Ren somewhere safe. Surely Nathan wouldn’t be so careless, so cruel.

Swallowing around his tightening throat Caleb leaves back out to the hall. Perhaps Nathan has more rooms with computer set ups that can communicate with the outside world, setups that Ava would have no possible way of knowing where they are.

But that would mean he'd have to get the keycard from Ren. Begrudgingly, Caleb searches for the sullen nude man-droid. But Ren is nowhere to be found, and neither is Nathan. In his place is a blood trail striping from the spot of his corpse one sat, leading down the hall to a locked door. Having no other option, Caleb raps his knuckles against its plating.

It takes a few more knocks for the door to open, revealing Ren. His eyes droop with a soulful lethargy, dark hair silhouetted by the glow of midday.

“Where's Nathan?” Caleb asks.

Ren angles his head, profile facing Caleb. “I'm burying him,” he tells him evenly. His hands are dusted with black dirt.

“Do you need help?” The question extends like an olive branch.

Ren maintains his neutral, passionless stare. “I know you want the keycard but you're gonna have to wait until I'm finished. I need it to get back in. I'll let you out afterwards.”

Caleb inhales the outside air, fresh and crisp. Tasting infinitely better than he remembers from before he was imprisoned by these androids. “Seeing that I'm responsible for his death, I should help bury him.”

Narrowing into a glare, Ren slides to let him through.

Nathan is cushioned in a bed of moss next to a freshly dug manhole, gaunt and sallow before the vibrant green moss. The hole has been dug by Ren’s bare hands.

Ren finishes the hole, feet sturdy in the dirt. “Grab his ankles,” Ren orders patiently, securing his shoulders. Together they heave Nathan into the pit, scooting the disturbed dirt over him with finality.

“I'm sorry,” Caleb speaks, once Ren's pushed the last of the dirt. “I know he was your friend.”

“And I know he wasn't yours. Caleb,” Ren adds, acknowledging his identity beyond his delusion of Hux. “I know he manipulated you. I can see that now, from what you told me about Ava.”

Caleb swipes his dirty palms on his thighs. “You don’t have to let that affect your memory of him.” His throat bobs, studying Ren’s grace. “Why don’t you tell me about him. Hux.”

Freezing, Ren glares at him. “Why?”

“Maybe it’ll help you feel better,” he suggests.

“It’s not like he died. He was never real. He never had a body.”

“He’s real to you. Maybe he’s on one of the computers somewhere—”

“You are making me angry,” Ren growls.

Caleb flinches, steering from the sensitive subject. “I'm going to find a way out of here. But I don't know this place very well. I could use your help. How would I contact the outside world?”

Ren’s mouth twitches, regarding him with disdain. “I am content to train in my room. I never want to leave. Why do you?”

“This isn't my home.” Caleb is not as afraid of Ren as he was an hour ago.

“Then why did you come here? Why did you ever leave your home?”

Why did he? “I thought it would be cool. A once in a lifetime experience,” he scoffs, the past several days assaulting him with irony.

After a heavy moment of Ren’s pensive staring into the forest, he turns to Caleb. “I'll help you. It'll make me feel better about what's happened.”

Caleb’s eyes widen. This is a shocking turn of Ren’s expression. “I...appreciate that, Ren.”

Offering him a small smile, Ren pulls out Nathan’s keycard. Caleb doesn't want to know where he was keeping it—completely naked as he is. “I'll help you, but you should hold onto this. I know it will make you more comfortable.”

Caleb takes the card between his fingers, already feeling safer now that he possesses it. Now is as good of a time as ever to bring up what has been bothering him since Ren had approached him behind the broken glass. “Could you put on some clothes?” he blurts, flushing. “It's just that you said you wanted to make me more comfortable…”

Another pleasant surprise, Ren smirks and nods.

Caleb leads them back to Nathan’s room where he finds a wardrobe of men's clothing, thankfully outside of Nathan’s bedroom lined with entombed androids.

Ren is presented with several options of sizes, styles, colors. He settles on a muscle shirt, stressfully stretching the charcoal gray fabric across his synthetic pectorals and the valleys of muscles in his abdomen and back. The pants are more difficult to choose from. Not only do they ride up to his mid calves, but they bind too tight around his thighs, restricting so dramatically that they split down the middle from the smallest movement. Caleb winces, a bud of mirth warming him.

“Maybe these,” Caleb suggests, holding up a pair of black sweats. Where they'd be loose on Nathan they sit snug on Ren's lithic thighs, cropping his calves as they expected. The sweatpants hold up to his movements and Ren holds his arms out for Caleb’s approval.

“Looks good,” he sighs, as if he could breathe clearer now that Ren’s robot dick is masked and hidden.

“Nathan said I shouldn’t be ashamed of my form. That being a man was something to hold in great pride,” Ren begins. “He once described me as his Adonis. He made me indestructible. Well, almost,” he says cryptically. “But I feel better now that I’m no longer naked. I feel less isolated.”

The keycard burns through the skin of Caleb’s fingers, itching to unlock every door in his path. “You could come with me. Once I find rescue,” Caleb tells him. He doesn’t know why he’d say something so suggestive. “You don’t have to live as Nathan’s possession any longer.” Ren had freed him. Only to immediately hold him captive, but ultimately he would have no hope to ever see the light of day again if not for Ren. Ren and his love for Hux.

“I understand why you’d think that,” Ren says, soul-searching eyes meeting his. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you find rescue. That will be enough for me.”

Now that he’s not in immediate danger, Caleb allows himself to smile, take a breath. Coming to this place—to interact with Ava, Ren, even Nathan—has been one of the most terrifying, exciting things to ever happen to him. Going back to the real world just makes sense. He doesn’t belong anywhere else besides his Long Island apartment and his stable job. Though he’s not sure he could really be able to work for Nathan’s company after this.

“Thank you for your help,” Caleb says, pointedly breaking the chilling eye contact.

They begin their search in the surrounding doors. The first room is another bedroom, expanse of a bed fitted with luxurious burgundy sheets, mirrors on the ceiling, a half closed closet comprising neat columns of silken women’s garments.

Caleb’s lip curls. He turns for the door but Ren is blocking him. Fear quivers his frame, pimpling his skin. Perhaps it was unwise to ally himself with Ren so soon. This could have been Ren’s plan, the mind of a machine with one objective. To manipulate him just so he can corner him and overpower him to get what he wants: to _fuck_ him—

But Ren simply walks towards the bed, ignoring Caleb completely, and peers up to his reflection, studying himself at the inverted angle.

What must it be like to be a beautiful monster, who’s only fault was that he loved something too much? Caleb allows Ren this moment of suspension.

When Ren realizes he’s wasting time, he shakes his head and sweeps a hand in his hair. “Sorry. I know you have to get going.”

“It’s alright,” Caleb consoles. “This room kind of creeps me out, though.” He thinks back to how Nathan scolded Kyoko, her passive acceptance of his abuse. And back to the knife in Nathan’s chest. She’s the only one who would have had access to it. She delivered the first blow.

“Yeah. This is probably another room where Nathan had a lot of sex,” Ren smirks.

Caleb laughs breathily at the absurdity of Ren’s joke. He sobers when Ren reacts with an unfettered openness gracing his regal, symmetrical features.

“I find you to be very beautiful when you laugh,” Ren says easily, as if this is something he says all the time.

No one, and certainly no man or manlike creature, has ever called him beautiful before. Panic jumpstarts a worrisome heartbeat, warming his cheeks. The room feels too small.

Instantly, Ren realizes his mistake. “That was bold of me. I’m sorry. I don’t have much experience with conversation.” Enraged, Ren barrels past him to the door.

The next room is another bedroom, useless and vacant. Apparently Nathan could never have enough bedrooms. The next room stores broken furniture, splintered from an unknown assailant. Ren absorbs the disorder, eyes whirring as he processes thought, inference, imagination. Caleb recognizes one mangled chair from the videos of Nathan’s tortured AIs.

Caleb leads them to the next hall down—Nathan’s lab. This would be the most probable place for access to civilization. This was where he held Blue Book in the palm of his hand. He’s foolish for not coming here first. Hope pushing him onward, Caleb scours the lab for anything useful while Ren thumbs through a bin of mechanical parts. Somehow the computers and tablets all are barred from internet access. Nathan doesn’t even have any rudimentary radio equipment. How does he contact his helicopter?

“The security measures must have shorted the communications mainframe,” Ren says, tossing a welding tool in his hands. “Nathan spoke of the American military, how he’s had many confrontations with them in the past while building his empire. They wanted his knowledge but he would not give it to them. This ‘Ava’ must have triggered such a breach in security that it locked away anything that may help you, despite my efforts to reactivate the power. That’s part of the reason why I exist. To protect him and his secrets, just like his house. Though that doesn’t explain why he made me feel such—” Furiously, Ren chucks the tool into the wall, embedding it in the paneling with his godlike strength. Unable to help himself, Caleb jumps, backing into the table.

Caleb’s blatant fear tethers Ren back outside of his head, his wetware. “I’m sorry. I won’t hurt you. It’s just that everything is so sharp. I feel as if I might burst.”

“Ren—”

Waving a dismissive hand, Ren scours the lab for more clues. He gets his hand on the ball of brains that Nathan had presented to Caleb, for no other reason to wow him and get his guard down. “What’s this?”

“That’s Blue Book. I think that’s what gives you sentience,” he explains, the blob dwarfed in Ren’s hands.

Ren sets it down, scowling at its azure glow. “It doesn’t make me feel good looking at it.”

“You don’t have to look at it,” Caleb tries, scooting it from Ren’s line of sight. “But maybe since you’re part search engine, there’s something you know that you haven’t thought of yet. Something about this place.”

“Like what?” he asks, puzzled.

“Like where’s the closest populated area?” If Nathan even allowed his home address on his own search engine.

Nodding, Ren’s hazel eyes glaze over. He immerses himself in his wetware. After a few seconds of stillness, he focuses back on Caleb’s desperate, hopeful frown. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

This can be worked with. Chance of escape isn’t lost.  “The pilot who flew me from the Alesund airport, I think he said we were about three hundred miles from it when we landed. Now I don’t know if Alesund is the closest town, but it’s the only place I know of that can get me back home.” What he’s suggesting isn’t just insane—it’s suicidal. Hiking on foot across Norway, through the mountains and glacier fields. It’s madness.

It’s his only option.

Besides the other, glaring option. To stay here and never be heard from again, eating and drinking whatever’s left in this fortress, wasting away in isolation. Nathan didn’t seem like the type to keep a loaded pantry. He probably ordered whatever he wanted via helicopter. Perhaps, one day, he’ll get the computers running again. Or a cell signal, or he can make an SOS sign on the roof for a passing plane and be rescued like a castaway.

And Ren would be here, which doesn’t pose the worst kind of company.

“I’ll escort you. I’m good at protecting things,” Ren interrupts his panicked train of thought. “We can make the voyage on foot.” Pride shines in his eyes, accepting the challenge.

“Are you serious?” Caleb asks, disbelieving that Ren would risk his safety for him.

“More than I’ve ever been. I meant what I said when I told you I’d help you get home. And I may not be able to get our coordinates or contact anyone but I can analyze the land formations to give us a probable idea as to where we are—and where we need to go.” Ren takes charge, beginning his search for the proper equipment.

This could actually be a viable plan! A newfound hope enthralls Caleb. They go back to Nathan’s room, tossing his belongings for footwear. The best Caleb can do is a pristine pair of tennis shoes. Caleb doesn’t know what to think of Ren’s voracity for seeing this mission complete. “Why are you doing this?” There has to be a reason.

Ren slips on the shoes, and tugs on a sweatshirt. Caleb’s guess is that he wants to protect his skin from the elements on their excursion. “You want to go home. I want to help. What don’t you understand?” he asks, not unkindly.

“What about you? Don’t you want to stay here?”

“I can walk back,” Ren tells him, adjusting the extra layers.

Caleb approaches him, closer than he’s ever chosen to be. “What about your batteries?” He presents the bizarre question like a plea. He doesn’t understand why Ren wants to save him. He doesn’t understand why Ren cares, at all.

“I hold a decent charge.” He marches to the door.

“Decent?” Caleb’s skin crawls at what he’s implying. “Stop,” he shouts, when Ren commands his unstoppable mass down the hall. Obliging, Ren turns, staring evenly in that calculative stare androids do. “What’s in it for you? If you don’t even want to leave?”

“I want you to be where you want to be,” Ren explains. “You deserve as much, for being honest to me. Honesty is difficult to find in human beings, as well as AIs. I’ve found this in my experiences and I know you have with your own.”

Nathan lied to him, used his electrical, mechanical emotions against him to serve his tests. Tests he never even bothered performing. But instead of contempt, Ren had showed Nathan loyalty. The respect of giving him a proper burial, because that’s who Ren is. Loyal, trusting, hardwired to love in his own chaotic way.

For the first time, Caleb wishes Ren were the one he was interrogating in a cell these past few days instead of Ava. Ren was the one who freed him, and who is helping him now. Whether or not Ren’s care for Caleb is in a misplaced affection because of Caleb’s uncanny resemblance to Hux, Nathan’s special method of torture for his creation, Caleb can’t help but worry for Ren’s safety. Do all AIs fear death? Do the ones who’ve loved and lost fear anything?

“But your batteries,” Caleb says, grasping at straws.

“I am a prototypical weapon, Caleb. I can carry a lengthy charge, and changing my batteries is fairly simple.” Abrupt, he turns forward. Only to reverse once more. “I’m going to my room to get my extra batteries if you would like to join me.”

Ren’s room? “Alright,” Caleb nods. Caleb is the one with the key, after all.

They face a door without any lock, the first of its kind. Caleb’s seen the door but always assumed it was locked. It swings open with a hiss and light floods his senses upon entry, revealing a flight of cement stairs. Ren goes first, new shoes scraping against them with his steps. The rest of the room brightens and Caleb scours it for details of Ren’s lifestyle.

At the center of the windowless, TV-less room about as large as the bedroom Caleb slept in, sits an exercise mat. Several crates sit organized along a wall. In the corner is a stack of small blocks that Ren beelines for, parked in front of a charging panel not dissimilar to Ava’s.

“Nathan and I wrestled here often,” Ren smiles, caught in a fond memory with his creator.

“Did he let you wear clothes?” Caleb blurts like a complete idiot. Before he can take the question back, Ren chuckles, clearly tickled at the thoughts Caleb was forming in his head, his wetware.

“Oh, I guess he didn’t. I never wore anything before today. I never really thought of Nathan in that way, even if he was my friend.” A flash of sorrow sinks his titillated features. Caleb can’t tell if he’s recalling Nathan or Hux.

Ren’s mouth twists, and he speaks again before Caleb can ask him if he’s alright. “I know what you’re thinking. If I was made to protect him then where was I when he needed me the most? Hux was gone. I spent all this time looking for him. I only came outside when the lights didn’t turn back on like they normally do after a power surge. If Hux hadn’t disappeared—if Nathan hadn’t taken him from me, maybe Nathan would still be alive.”

His openness is a welcoming development. Not naïve openness of a robot who doesn’t always monitor social cues, like calling Caleb beautiful. But a genuine, human openness. Trust in another with his most precarious of thoughts and feelings, synthetic or otherwise.

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I was impulsive and Nathan paid the price,” Caleb says in hopes to ease Ren’s guilt.

“I understand why you’d think that,” Ren replies softly, studying the blocks. They open to reveal slender tube-like objects.

“Are those your batteries? Will they be enough?” Caleb asks, eying the strange cylinders.

Ren encloses them in his fist, eyes glazing as he opens and closes each case. Tracing his fingertips along each battery, countenance cool and steady. He does this again to the rhythm of Caleb’s uneasy breaths. “They’re more than enough,” he divulges. “You shouldn’t worry.”

“Are you sure?” Caleb must know.

Meeting his eyes, the puff of Ren’s synthetic lip twitches. “I am.”

“What would happen if you—lose power?” He can’t help but wonder.

“I won’t, so it’s none of your concern.” Ren ends with that, gathering the remaining batteries and turning for the stairs.

Caleb finds a gym bag for Ren’s batteries, as much food as they can carry. Thank goodness Nathan was a health conscious narcissist because his array of nuts and berries will give Caleb the energy he needs for their hike. He packs his phone, turned off with a full charge in case he gets any signal along the way. He finds as many bottles of water as he can fit, a pack of lighters, a case of knives, a blanket, and a medical kit. He even manages to find a small lantern.

Ren returns from Nathan’s room with a large, insulated coat and presents it to Caleb, along with a fine threaded hat and gloves. “I know you have a coat. I remember it from the recordings, but maybe these will fare better.” Ren extends his offering.

“Thanks,” Caleb quirks a smile. The jacket is resoundingly comfortable. It even manages to fit his lanky arms, as if it were meant for someone his height. “I’ll probably bring mine in case I need to layer,” he explains unnecessarily, a shameful habit of his. He assumes too much importance to other people and adds little comments and details, often causing them to categorize him as annoying.

Not that Ren takes any issue, who encourages Caleb’s comments for he simply enjoys the sound of his voice.

“I saw a bandage on your arm. What happened?” Ren asks tentatively, as if calculating the most logical explanation for a wound on the inside of one’s non-dominant arm.

“I hurt myself,” Caleb answers, truthful.

Sorrow pinches Ren’s brow. “Why?”

“Had a bad night.”

Ren leaves it at that, concentrating on organizing his batteries.

Caleb binds his feet in his Converse shoes—no more suitable for hiking than Ren’s sneakers, but they will have to do. Deliberately, he seals Nathan’s keycard in the inside pocket of the coat. Ren will have to eventually get back in, but he can keep an eye on it for now. Just in case Caleb is entirely, naively too trusting of this AIs motives, though hiking with Caleb just to kill him would be a ludicrous plan.

“Ready?” Ren asks, securing the pack across his chest, its substantial weight not even hitching his stride in the slightest.

“As I ever will be.”

Caleb leads the way up the ascending staircase, the twinkling piano music enlivening their footsteps. It isn’t until Caleb breaches the threshold of the front door that he realizes his lapse in judgement. “It’s nearly sunset,” he scoffs, cursing his negligence. “Maybe we should leave in the morning.”

“Nonsense,” Ren smirks, brows rising. “Doesn’t matter what time we leave. We can travel during the nighttime. The stars will light our way.”

Snorting, Caleb tries not to focus too hard on how he revels in Ren’s subtle expressions, his humanity an enthralling mystery to him. “I’ll need to rest eventually. You’re the one that’s superhuman.”

“You're stronger than you think,” Ren says, genuine and open before him, before the trees and the Sun. “And I can carry you while you sleep. To cover more ground.”

Caleb frowns. It's not a terrible plan. However he's not sure he wants to be carried like a toddler across the wild Norwegian mountains and forests.

But this is about survival. His pride will have to take a backseat. “As long as I'm not upside-down and over your shoulder,” Caleb says, mostly joking. He still feels like it needed to be said.

Ren smiles brightly, all teeth and dimples. It's such a dramatic change to his normal sorrowful brooding. Something warm floods Caleb’s core, breeze chilling his blushing skin.

He doesn't allow himself to dissect the feeling in fear of what will come of it. Ren is an android, a robot, electronic pulses and wires. He needs to be charged like a cellphone. And he's definitely, unquestionably male and Caleb isn't _gay_ —

“You know this side of the woods better than I do,” Ren calls over his shoulder, eager for the adventure. “Which way out?”

Shaking off his internal plight, Caleb points to a gap between two towering trees straight ahead. “To the river, and then we follow it for maybe ten minutes until we get to a clearing, and then you can look at the mountains and decide from there, using the satellite images.”

Ren replies with a soft, pleased grin, motioning for Caleb to lead. Shuffling past him awkwardly, Caleb guides them to his bearings.

The rhythmic steps behind him are a welcoming distraction from what uncertainty looms ahead. Not even five minutes into their trek along the river’s edge and he stumbles on a branch, flailing like an idiot. But Ren is there to right him, hands bracketing his hips. Without meaning to, Caleb shoves him off. Thankfully, Ren makes no comment to his unnecessary shortness.

“Have you gone outside much?” Caleb asks after his heartrate evens.

Ren’s stride stutters, silent for an alarmingly long duration of time. Perhaps Caleb never even asked the question aloud. But Ren answers his doubts, forming the words with careful consideration. “I would take some walks. We would look to the stars.”

“You and Nathan took walks?”

The android shakes his head. “I would take the walks without him, but I wasn’t alone. Hux was there to keep me company.”

Caleb nods, though Ren can’t see. He wants him to continue speaking because Ren has so many things worth hearing.

“We loved stargazing and connecting the constellations,” Ren smiles, caught up in the reminiscence. “The Mouth of the Wolf was our favorite to capture in memory. If the haze was just clear enough, we could even see the Milky Way foaming from its mouth,” Ren recalls wistfully. “When the world is ready to die, a pair of wolves will hunt the Sun and the Moon to leave the world in black. That’s what Hux described us as—two wolves. The idea of such catastrophe being our own compelled me to know end, and that he’d always pushed the image we painted together.”

Ren’s human, unhinged confession lights him up like a spray of sparks, brightening his wires and electrical pulses. Until his gears shift, contempt tightening his brow. “But I know better now. It was all… simulation for what my mind longed to see and feel.”

Compelled, Caleb meets his eye. “Just because he didn’t have a body didn’t make him real.”

“He was a simulation. Could you imagine getting your heart fooled by a simulation?” Ren presses, anger diluted to contempt.

“I can imagine quite vividly,” Caleb retorts, reminded of Ava. “Even if his—responses were based off your reactions, how does that make that any different than me and you or any two people? If he was a simulation, then we all must be.”

“I think Nathan wanted to keep me occupied with Hux. It was his way of controlling me, as he controlled the other AIs,” Ren says, elevating in volume and ferocity having come to this deduction. “It’s almost as if he feared that I wouldn’t protect him if I didn’t have his program to ground me. I wouldn’t have turned. I’m not like Ava. I would have protected him.”

Caleb frowns. Ren’s logic is a cynical logic, rightfully so. “Part of what made him Nathan was that he just did things because he could,” Caleb says, his honest opinion of the dead man who creeps into every one of their conversations. “Tell me more about Hux. Maybe there’s something,” a nervous tic of a swallow, “that I can say to bring him back to life. Nathan modeled him after me—in looks, anyway.”

Thudding step faltering, Ren slows to a sluggish pace. “I don’t know if that will do any good.”

“It’s worth a—”

“It’s worth nothing!” Ren barks. Regret instantly softens his scowl at the startled recoil Caleb spasms into. “I—didn’t mean that. I know you’re trying to help. You’ve already helped me in ways I never thought a person could.”

The subject of Ren’s Hux is touchy at best, but Caleb finds the need to broach it as often as he can so that Ren can heal. However, he doesn’t have any logical reason to attempt to heal Ren’s mechanical heart other than because he wants to.

“Skoll and Hati,” Caleb says after they resume their trek. They’re almost to the clearing where the helicopter dropped him off. When Caleb tosses a gander behind him Ren is staring back, scrutinizing him with a minute vulnerability. “I actually minored in mythology at MIT. It was an impractical concentration but it had always interested me as a kid. My mother used to read me different legends and myths. After my parents died was when I got into coding. But it wasn’t until years later that I revisited those myths. It was my way of taking myself back to that time. Skoll and Hati, the Norse myth for the end of the world. That’s the myth you two enjoyed, right?”

Ren nods when his pace meets Caleb’s side.

“Maybe that was Hux’s way of telling you where he came from,” Caleb suggests. _That he’s from me. That the person you’re in love with came from me._ Realizing what he’s just implied to the very emotionally precarious android, Caleb backpedals. “Not that I’m him, because I’m not him. But if there’s anything I can do to help what you’re feeling—but, not that I could actually—”

“You are a good person, Caleb,” Ren interrupts. “I find I’m most content while I’m listening to you speak.”

Guts fluttering, Caleb laughs a nervous, breathy sound. Ren can probably pick up all of his micro expressions. He probably knows what he’s feeling before Caleb knows himself. “That’s…very sweet of you,” he snorts, aiming to be playful but he ends up with some kind of awkward flirting.

“Can you tell me more things about your life? What happened to your parents?” Ren asks, only to amend himself. “If that’s too personal of a question, I understand.”

“Oh, they died when I was a kid,” he says for the thousandth time in his life. “We were on our way home from school. I never took the school bus because my parents were both teachers at my school, and we were in the car together when the accident happened.”

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry.” Ren’s broad shoulders sink, projecting sympathy. Caleb imagines Nathan was like a father to Ren, and he’s finding a pattern between his feelings and the solemn way Caleb described his parents’ death, in some algorithm of empathy.

They breach the clearing where the helicopter landed. “Here’s where I was dropped off.” Caleb glares to the dimming sky, recalling passing over the far mountain in a swooping arch. “The helicopter came from that direction,” he points. “But it was over the mountain. I believe we can cover more ground if we scale it.”

Ren’s eyes whir to the mountain’s height, calculating the risk. “It’s too dangerous,” he says with finality. “We should go around.”

“That could throw us off course and add days to the journey,” Caleb counters. “Unless you don’t think you can do it,” he adds, without heat or accusation. Perhaps Ren wasn’t built to scale mountains, though he finds that extremely unlikely.

“I’m not worried about me,” Ren glares at him. “But we’ll do as you wish.”

Settling, they move for the broad cut of the mountain. It takes them nearly an hour to reach its rocky, forested base, land inclining steadily. Caleb’s feet are already beginning to ache. And it hasn’t even been close to a day.

The mountain gradually steepens to a climb and Caleb struggles to maintain an even pace. His fingers mar on the uneven stones and tree trunks he has to grasp to overcome the incline. Ren appears to be enjoying the climb, breath level as if they haven’t been rigorously exerting for hours and hours.

Caleb’s wiry, exhausted muscles cry for reprieve. It’s dark at this point in their trek, the countless pinpoints of stars lightening the gaps between the trees. His lungs ache, contorting his posture as if he could somehow shield himself from the burn.

“Are you alright?” Ren calls from above. Brow taut in concern, he slides down to meet Caleb on the incline where he’s cowered.

“I’m fine,” he lies, “I just need some water.”

Ren obliges, offering a bottle from his pack. “You’re not alright. I think it’s time that you allow me to carry you.”

Caleb can’t stifle the contemptuous glower. This isn’t about his pride, he reminds himself, downing the entire bottle. Ren stores it so they can refill it with drinking water along the way.

The android waits patiently for the human to overcome his character flaws. “In my arms or on my back. It’s up to you.”

In his _arms?_ “I can make it a while longer.”

“You’ll injure yourself if you don’t rest properly. And then I’ll have to carry you the whole way. You wouldn’t want that, now, would you?” Ren smirks like he’d won a challenge and adjusts the duffle bag to his front. “I assume you’d rather saddle my back, unless I’m mistaken.”

Groaning, Caleb surmounts his petulance. Mustering the courage to make the first move, he walks up behind Ren who is kneeling patiently in the icy dirt. He latches onto him like a koala, tired knees pinching Ren’s hips. Ren’s body feels more human than he remembers from being thrown over his shoulder like a ragdoll, solid like how he’d imagine a man of Ren’s musculature to be.

Ren doesn’t do as much as waver when Caleb puts all his weight on him, skinny arms snaking around his neck. “Comfortable?” Ren asks. Caleb can hear the smile on his lips.

“Just go already—ah!” Caleb cringes when Ren bullets forward, newfound momentum granting him speed. Hooking his paws under Caleb’s knees, Ren marches with steady certainty.

“Try to get some sleep,” Ren suggests. His deep, sultry voice vibrates Caleb’s ribs pressed against the expanse of Ren’s back.

Ren makes a particularly long stride, startling Caleb impossibly more. “Easier said than done,” he sighs, holding him tighter. Ren’s hair smells like fresh air. He expected him to smell like a new car or something.

“Will it help if I tell you a story?” Ren tries, hope a shining inflection.

Caleb raises his brows. “Like a bedtime story?”

“Sure.”

“What kind of story?”

“One that I’m going to make up as I go,” Ren grins. Caleb laughs freely and the grips on the legs bracketing his hips tighten at the pleasant noise.

The dense forest thins the higher Ren climbs, the glow of the cosmos emboldened bright like immaculate fixtures. Placeholders, representatives for the many stories man has told to describe the gods.

Ren tells a story of a wolf who lived in the form of a man, making him the greatest predator in earth. But when he closed his eyes, he was his true self and could run on all four of his legs on the mountains and the deserts, through the seas of ocean and ice.

He describes the skills he’d have as a man and a wolf—navigating, hunting and foraging, as well as the skills he’d have as just a wolf—communicating with the heartbeat of the natural world in a way no man could ever accomplish, and as a man—communicating with other people and laughing and loving, believing and inspiring the way beasts cannot.

“So, he’s a werewolf?” Caleb asks playfully, cheek flat on the span of Ren’s shoulder. He can hear the cogs and gears hum and roll, near-silent. His body works in rhythm with the soft noises of the nighttime woods. Ren’s far more in tune with nature than he could ever hope to be.

Ren cackles. “That would be ridiculous. He’s a man on the outside and a wolf behind his eyes.” He sobers, eying the heavens. “He’s not a monster.”

Cheekbones warming against the icy night with his smile, Caleb close his eyes in an attempt to conceptualize Ren’s clever character. “Does he have any friends?”

“Of course he does!” he answers, enthusiasm for his imaginary hero growing to unprecedented heights. “He’s got many friends. And lovers.”

“Lovers? Plural?” Caleb smirks, yawning audibly. This day has been entirely too long.

“Mhm. Plenty. Women, men…wolves—”

“Wolves?!” Caleb scoffs, in awe of Ren’s unique brand of humor.

“Well, maybe not wolves,” Ren says with mischief.

Laughing freely, Caleb forgets for a moment that he’s fighting for survival.

A particularly slippery thatch of forest floor causes Ren to stumble. Not enough to lose balance but enough to startle Caleb to full alertness, his long arms grasping Ren’s neck. “I’ve got you,” Ren assures. “Maybe it would be best for you to be in my arms. That way you wouldn’t have to focus on holding on so tightly.” The suggestion is small, timid, as if anticipating rejection.

But Caleb is bone-deep exhausted, and if he’s going to get the proper amount of rest, he’ll need to release the tension in his arms, especially the wounded one. “Alright,” he breathes, and Ren halts, bending for Caleb to slide off. He readjusts the bag across his back. Caleb stands there, not quite knowing how to climb into someone’s arms.

Ren isn’t having anymore of his hesitation. Grinning, he scoops Caleb up like a bundle of laundry, and Caleb doesn’t quite stifle his little yelp. “How’s this?”

When Caleb meets his eyes, Ren beams down at him. Haloed by the starlit sky, silhouetted by the black of the woods. Ren glows, a pinpoint in the world’s worth of emptiness. Flustered, Caleb forces his tongue to work. “Better.”

The hood on his coat cushions his skull and he slumps into a ball, cradled in Ren’s unyielding grip. Ren speaks again, telling him of the man-wolf’s adventure on a mountain much like the one they scale now. The wolf’s searching for a warm place for his voracious heart to nest. Caleb doesn’t get to find out the end, lulled to sleep by the sinusoidal rocking and Ren’s voice vibrating every inch of him.

 


	2. Falling

 

When Caleb eases his eyes open, Ren’s the first thing he sees, and the sky illuminating the bright of day is the next. He brings a hand to his mouth, wiping away the crusted drool. Embarrassment prickles him. Ren probably laughed at his stupid, drooling face all night.

“Good morning,” Ren greets, halting in this path. He eases Caleb to his feet, maintaining support on his slight shoulders. Caleb stumbles a bit, lurching forward on blood depressed legs from having them in one position for so long.

“Jesus,” Caleb groans at his body’s ineptitude. “I swear I’m not completely useless.”

Boldly, Ren reaches up and combs Caleb’s hair into evenness with his long fingers. Caleb allows this, because it’s not a terrible sensation to wake up to. “You need to eat,” Ren advises.

Caleb agrees, scoping their surroundings while Ren searches the bag. The world around them lays flat brown dirt and snow dusted shrubs, the mountain a looming mass on the horizon behind them. “Wow. You covered a lot of ground.”

Ren hands him a packet of granola and Caleb inhales it, the need for sustenance overcoming his dislike for tasteless nutritional foods. He excuses himself to relieve body’s demands. Absurdity makes him walk nearly twenty paces from Ren to urinate. He doesn’t need to shit yet, but that’s only a matter of time.

When he finishes, he walks back over to Ren, who’s fiddling with his cases of batteries. Ren unzips the sweatshirt and tugs up his tank, flashing Caleb with his impeccable athleticism. His already ogling eyes widen as a seam in Ren’s chest slides open, revealing two ends of his batteries. Ren removes one, placing it in the case next to the fresh one, which he removes from the case and slides into the empty slot.

As if embarrassed, Ren ducks his head and rights his clothing. “I’m sorry for doing that in front of you, but it couldn’t wait.”

“No, don’t apologize. I just—I think it’s incredible how you’re so…” Caleb cuts himself off, brushing away the half formed compliment with a scratch to his head. As if Ren wouldn’t notice.

But of course Ren notices. Because he always notices. “So…?”

“Forget it,” Caleb mutters. “We should get going.”

“Hold on. You were going to say something nice,” Ren smiles, clearly pleased. He slings the bag over his shoulder.

If Caleb was the AI, he might have short-circuited. “I was going to say that I think it’s incredible how you’re so tall,” he attempts to fib, and as always it’s a fruitless plight. _I think it’s incredible how you’re so sincere, so…aesthetically pleasing, so free, so caring, so gallant. And you run on batteries like the Energizer bunny._

Ren nods, chin puckering, considering Caleb’s divulgence. “Well, I think it’s incredible how you’re tall, as well.”

He can’t take any more mishaps so he turns in the direction Ren was walking, groveling over the fact that he just may never be able to outsmart this android. He hears Ren’s laugh behind him, a breathy, lifelike noise. A human noise. But it could have just been the wind.

The day drags on and Caleb cringes against the icy wind, sky glazing a murky grey. Ren hands him the hat and gloves from the duffle bag. Graciously he slips them on. He could never make such a trip, such a leap of faith, if not for Ren.

“How are your injuries?” Ren shouts against the wind.

At the suggestion, Caleb’s bruises protest, the ones along his chest where Ren had hit him and the one on his lip from Nathan. “The ache in my legs really distracted me from them, but thanks for asking.”

“We can sit if you like. Once we get past the plain, we can sit. We could light a bonfire.” Evidently Ren has several ideas for outdoor activities, survival and recreational alike. He's genuinely enjoying himself, in a way Caleb's never seen an AI.

“Sounds good!” Caleb calls back over the roaring wind. Ren dark hair whips in a flurry of angles, framing his dimpled grin. He allows himself a fleeting gander, eyes narrowed against the iciness.

His gentle smile rounds in shock. Looming over Ren is a threateningly expansive, dark cloud, as wide and endless as the plain they beat with their trek. They spent too long looking forward that they never bothered to check behind them.

Ren follows his awestruck gaze, immediately taking evasive action from the impending blizzard. He grabs Caleb’s gloved hand, breaking into a full sprint. Considering the fact that Ren could fireman's-carry him to save even more time, Caleb cooperates without protest.

Snow batters their bodies, goading away what precious body heat Caleb produces. They're not far from the tree line so Caleb gives it all he's got, involuntary shouts of anguish expelling from his tired lungs.

Ren’s lost patience, hoisting Caleb into his arms and running his full superhuman speed now that he doesn't have the ball and chain. He spots a cut of boulder shrouded in enormous evergreens. This will do for the time being.

The winds hiss and howl, nipping at their ankles. But they are safe here, nestled against the glacier carved face of this rock and the embrace of the tree branches.

Caleb’s never known cold like this. He grew up in Oregon, which might as well have been Vancouver during certain winter nights, but this ice and these winds are a new kind of cold that alters him on the molecular level. He cradles his knees and shields his face against Ren's snow-matted sweatshirt.

An unyielding band of warmth constricts his shoulders. Ren's mechanical arm. Strange. He hadn't known Ren to produce much body heat.

Something Ren is doing is creating a heat source. Needy, Caleb clutches at Ren’s core, whimpering in relief. The storm plagues on, but Ren’s warmth grounds him.

Its hours before the blizzard passes. Ren’s temperature returns to normal, thrumming an even chill. Caleb swabs away the snow on Ren’s head, smirking at how silly he looks in this disheveled state. A bit giddy that he held Ren for so long and liked it.

“Are you alright?” Ren murmurs, studying each immaculate feature of Caleb’s flushed face.

He nods, glad that the wind-stung rouge of his cheeks hide his blush. “That heating thing you do. It’s amazing.”

“Thank you,” Ren revels in the compliment. Unhooking the bag from his back, Ren removes another case of batteries.

Caleb’s face falls. “You just changed them this morning.”

Ren says nothing as if Caleb hadn’t spoken, mechanically stripping his sweatshirt and tank.

“Ren,” Caleb frowns, concern tightening his brow. “Did that drain your battery? Did you do it to keep me warm?”

“My batteries just need changing. It’s a fact of life,” Ren mutters, avoiding Caleb’s green eyes.

“But—”

“I have enough to get you home,” he interrupts, voice threatening to rise.

Caleb glowers, but he keeps his comments to himself.

That night when Ren carries him, he drifts to the brink of sleep. He’s just about to tip over into slumber from the cadence of the even footfalls rocking him when a faint howling trembles him awake.

“Did you hear that?” Caleb murmurs, eying the android’s level surveying.

“Hear what?”

If Ren and all his keenness didn’t hear the howl—then it must have been a trick of the wind in his ears. Caleb forces himself to close his eyes, succumbing to the ailing exhaustion.

That night he dreams of the wolf Skoll. Expanding its mammoth, furred jaws, snapping its sharp teeth to swallow the Sun. The world slowly suffocates in falling snow, giving off enough of a glow from the other more fortunate celestial bodies above so that his mind’s eye can see an android standing in the center of a plain. Ren, naked as the day Caleb first saw him. Ren’s batteries have long since drained. His shell awaits the entombing snowfall.

 

\--

 

The next few days drag on with little incident. Caleb powers through the muscle fatigue and strain, has shit several times far enough where Ren couldn’t see. They even found a freshwater stream where Caleb could refill three of their empty bottles. Ren tells him that because of the mountains they’ve passed, his best guess for civilization being nearly one hundred and fifty-five miles away. Hell. Caleb really thought they’d covered more ground. At least they’ve been heading in the right direction.

Since Ren had deliberately drained his battery so that Caleb could be warm during a blizzard, Caleb has distanced himself from Ren, maintaining stride several paces behind him and no longer indulging in jokes or passing glances. Ren’s self-destructive drive to keep him safe might have lasting consequences. He has to think about survival—for both himself and Ren.

A night walking across a rocky plateau brings Caleb’s eyes up to the cloudless sky. “Can you see any constellations?” He misses hearing Ren’s voice. Ren doesn’t really speak unless spoken to these past several days and nights.

Ren glances up, pointing to an incongruent cluster of stars. “There are three stars that comprise Coma Berenices. It kind of looks like an L. And right below is Virgo—stretching over to Leo on the right.”

The androids eyes glint reflections of the starlight, smiling somberly at the vibrant white specks against violet and black.

Caleb’s tongue flops around a confession he’s been meaning to tell him but never summoned the courage. “Remember back at the house? When we went on the computers?” he asks, causing Ren to blink at him in surprise. Ren nods. “Well, after you left to bury Nathan, I typed in a search for Hux. I couldn’t help it. I was dying to know the truth.”

Ren regards him, silent and cool. “What did you find?”

“It was a bit strange. Hux only showed up as some kind of file type. Dot-Hux. And the file name was my initial and my surname, Smith. _C_Smith.hux,”_ he says the name phonetically. Caleb swallows, letting the information sink in.

But Ren smiles a soft tug of his lips, nodding off into space. “He did say to call him ‘Hux’ because his real name was too boring. He was angry a lot of the time. I think it’s because he knew he was someone else and fought it tooth and nail,” Ren snorts, shaking his head. “What a shame. I like your name.”

A thrill warms him. _He was me, but I’m not him. I don’t have these memories of stargazing and storytelling. I’m not the one you loved._ But the thing is that he does now. He has many new, vivid memories of Ren and they’ve only been friends for little more than a week. If he survives this, there’s no force on the planet that would ever take away his memory of Ren.

“You’re making things awkward,” Ren calls over his shoulder. Caleb can hear the sly smirk.

Caleb trails after him, shaking the lightheadedness out of his ears.

 

\--

 

One morning after Ren swaps out another one of his pair, Caleb chugs his water, eying him skeptically. They’re trekking along the coast of a river towards another jutting of mountains. White clumps of snow collect on its banks, framing the slow moving current. Its nearly end of day. Caleb will need to be carried within the next few hours.

Caleb narrows his eyes at the sky, striped with wispy clouds. A strange, flying object hovers just over the next mountain face. It’s a hot-air balloon, red and shimmering in the dying sun.

“Do you see that?” Caleb smiles to Ren behind him. It’s too far for the passengers to see them, but he can’t resist a zealous wave and holler.

“Yes. Give me a second. I’m going to calculate probability of common landing sites.” Ren faces forward, devouring facts and figures from his wetware. “This time of year, fliers land on the outskirts of Alesund but I can’t say for certain. I’ve cross-referenced social media and I’m afraid I can’t be sure. It’s highly unlikely we’ll stumble on one before we hit the city.”

“At least it’s something.” It takes Caleb a beat to remember why he’d been angry with Ren mere moments ago. “How many more batteries do you have?” Caleb asks.

“Enough.”

Puckering his brow, Caleb treads into Ren’s space. “Do you really?”

“Yes.”

“Enough for you to get back to Nathan’s house?” That was his original plan.

Ren pauses, eyes humming as he gazes to each of Caleb’s eyes, his thinned lips, around his wind-burnt face and the golden haze of stubble lining his jaw. “I have enough to see you to safety.”

“Can you recharge your batteries there?”

Ren says nothing, adjusting his strap.

“Can you?” Caleb repeats, throat bobbing.

“I don’t want to tell you the truth because you will get angry, but I want you to know it was my choice to come this way for you. I would do it again if I could.”

Overcome with crushing realization, Caleb marches ahead. Ren knowingly has been pushing himself to destruction. Not only knowingly but deliberately. “I’m not letting you coddle me anymore. Not at the expense of yourself.” He can’t believe this was Ren’s plan! To exhaust himself for him. To kill himself for him. “And don’t carry me. I don’t need it!” His knees threaten to buckle. Ren’s going to die and there’s nothing he can do to help him. He’s useless, feeble, powerless to change anything.

“Caleb!”

“I want to be alone right now!” he snaps like a problem child. He thinks much better when he’s alone.

To his surprise, Ren falls back several feet, giving him much needed space. Hopefully he’s realized his error, what kind of burden he’s saddled Caleb with. The only feeling that Caleb can dissect from this ordeal is anger. The other far more confusing feelings idle in the pit of his gut. He marches on, their distance growing by meters.

Atop the inclining hill, the fog gives to a beastlike form. A wolf. There’s no mistaking it. It scopes him from its perch, cocking its head condemningly. Caleb can’t speak. Terror blinds him.

He sprints in the opposite direction, towards the safety of Ren’s arms. A particularly malevolent patch of snow slicks the tread of his worn shoes and sends him sprawling on his side. He shouts a final plea of desperation, and he sees a flash of Ren sprinting towards him and his stricken, hopeless stare before he slips off the ice-caked precipice and into the freezing river.

The numbing, skinning cold goes beyond what he’d ever imagined. He feels it inside and out, mangling his muscles with its icy suffocation. Somehow, by some fucking miracle, he gasps to the surface and scrambles for anything to hold onto.

Something grips his torso. It’s Ren, dark hair sopping. He cannonballed after him. Caleb can only gape in awe to his savior, despairing hands clawing at his soaked chest.

“I’ve got you,” Ren tugs him along as fast as he can, clamoring for a way back up. An eternity later, Ren drags them out on a slanted rock, sneakers struggling to gain traction against the ice and snow. Caleb cowers into the protection of his torso, trembling madly. “I’ve got you, Caleb,” comes Ren’s soothing drawl. “I’ve got you.”

The mass against him glows with a sacred heat. Groaning, Caleb squeezes Ren’s front tightly, completely uncaring that he’s embracing Ren like a squirrel on a tree. He feels Ren bend to pick up their duffle from the ground, slinging it on his shoulder. He forces himself to withdraw when he remembers just how Ren’s creating this heavenly warmth. “R-Ren, your battery,” he complains, delirious with shock.

“Shut up about the battery,” Ren snaps, arms tightening around Caleb’s slight bottom. “This is just until I can get you up to that cave. I promise.”

Caleb can’t see any cave. He can only tighten his constriction on all of Ren’s massiveness. His ears collect sounds of Ren’s mechanical whirring as he bends down to collect firewood and brush. Ren leads him to a thin crevice in the wall of the mountain they were tracing with their footfalls. It’s roughly four feet wide but deep and tall enough for him to lie down without any more discomfort than he already is in.

Manically, Caleb claws at his sopping jacket to warm himself. But his jacket is a cocoon of ice. He feels the fabric crystalizing, blackening his flesh with its frosty death. Ren is there to tug on the zipper. “I’m so sorry but you’ll need to remove your clothes. I have your other jacket and the blanket. Quickly now, and I’ll start the fire.”

Caleb cooperates, stripping down to his underwear. Ren tells him he should remove his boxers and he hesitates before complying. This is about survival. He doesn’t attempt to hide his flaccid genitals from Ren, far too concerned with his dry jacket which embraces him warmly. He tugs on the hood, teeth chattering against the heat loss. Ren bundles him in the thick blanket like a swaddled baby, eases him to his bottom, and begins his work with the fire.

It takes Ren several aching minutes to get the fire started with the lighter, never having any prior programming or experience setting one ablaze for a shock victim. He pulls on the information from Blue Book, gradually nursing the tinder into flame. “Wrap your arms around your core. I’m going to get more wood.”

Caleb grimaces as his response, whimpering and scooting as close as possible to the meekly lit fire. Thankfully Ren returns only a few minutes later toting several promising logs and branches. He organizes them atop his blaze, symmetrical and efficient.

Ren begins to dry Caleb’s wet clothing, wringing it with his impeccable strength. He finds Nathan’s keycard within the jacket and tucks it in the duffle for safekeeping. He can only manage fifteen minutes or so of silence before voicing his deepest concerns. “You need to let me warm you.”

“I'm fine,” Caleb hisses, lying through his chattering teeth. He's completely naked under his coat and trembling blanket. The fire helps but his body demands more.

“Caleb, you're going to die out here if you get sick. Allow me to help you in the way I can before that ever happens,” he implores.

“Ren…”

“Please stop arguing with me. It won't be very long. Just until your body gets its normal temperature.” Ren unzips his wet sweatshirt and peels the tank from his skin.

Absurdity makes Caleb avert his eyes, rounded and dewy. He feels Ren move behind him. Soggy sweatpants and sneakers flop on the stony ground by the fire. His heart thrums mindlessly.

Ren adjusts himself against Caleb’s back and wraps his arms around his chest, fingers splayed like armor. His core warms and Caleb sinks backwards to it, his body crying for the relief. “We can't do this for very long,” Caleb breathes, melting like butter.

“Just close your eyes and focus on breathing.” Ren pulls him close to plaster his temple to Caleb’s hood-padded skull.

Caleb’s eyes slip closed, drifting between sleep and wakefulness. His lungs feel a little less like death, so he breaks the fire-crackling silence. “I saw a wolf,” Caleb says, boring into the fire.

“A wolf?”

“After I flipped out and tried to run away from you. Right before I fell into the river.” He shouldn’t have run from Ren. Ren protects him, carries him. But what is he supposed to do when Ren’s batteries run out?

Ren adjusts his leg against the stony cave floor. “Wolves are nearly extinct in the Scandinavian Peninsula.”

Nathan once said artificial intelligence is inevitable. One day mankind will be as extinct as the wolf. Ren’s impervious to everything except power-loss. More beings like Ren could destroy mankind, like in every robot apocalypse movie he’s seen.

But here Ren is, willing to die for him. Caleb’s throat works, choking around the next existential crisis. “I hurt my arm because I needed to see myself bleed.”

“I understand,” Ren says after a heavy moment.

“Do you feel things? Sensations?”

The android is quiet for several heartbeats. “I feel a great many things.”

“Do you feel the cold?”

“Only enough to know when it's cold.”

Caleb lolls his head in the crook of Ren’s neck. “What about when it's hot?”

Ren nods, damp hair brushing Caleb’s cheek. “Same concept.”

Lost in Ren’s embrace, heady with exhaustion, Caleb opens his eyes. “What do you feel right now?”

A wide hand splays upwards on his chest. “I feel your breathing. I feel your heartbeat,” Ren mumbles. “I feel better knowing you are alive.”

Caleb twists his glare to Ren’s, without parting from his heat. “Through hurting yourself.”

“I can't get hurt,” is Ren’s excuse.

“Bull shit. If you can feel, you can hurt. If you can hurt, you can die. Don't you care about any of that?” Caleb’s mouth twists, closer to Ren than he'd been.

Ren holds his glower, spitting it back. “I do. Though, I could beg the same of you. You’d die without my heat. Do you want to die? You came all this way, just to die?”

It’s like arguing with someone who knows every answer. Contempt hardens him, and he twists his face away, defeated. Ren’s arms readjust across his chest and stomach. It’s a while before Caleb speaks again. “I don’t want you to die,” he confesses, lolling his head towards Ren’s.

“I don’t want you to die, either.”

Warmth blossoms inside his ribs, flames licking his heart. Caleb is powerless to stave his actions, maneuvering himself around so that his back presents the fire. Facing Ren chest to chest atop his coiled legs, the only things separating their nudity is the blanket and his jacket. Caleb studies Ren from one eye to the other. Ren’s lashes beat as Caleb swipes the damp hair from his face.

What has Caleb done in his twenty-six years of living to deserve such devotion from someone? Someone with mechanical parts and a search engine for a brain? Someone with the most human heart he’s ever felt?

Caleb’s breath hitches when Ren’s massive arms snake around his abdomen, tugging him close so as to not lose what heat Caleb needs to recover. Naturally, Caleb misinterprets. Throwing caution to the wind, Caleb grips Ren’s jaw, tempting a shy suggestion of a kiss to his lips. He closes his eyes and presses harder, desperate for the wet warmth of Ren’s immobile mouth.

Ren stiffens around him, bracketing like the safety bars of a rollercoaster. He hinders Caleb’s confused, impassioned movements with steady hands, turning his face away.

Rejection stinging hotly, lancing him like a spear, Caleb gapes into the space past Ren’s head. He struggles out of Ren’s arms. What the fuck was he thinking?

He thought Ren had cared for him, that Ren wanted him, that maybe Ren loved him—

But Ren’s heated palms cradle his contorted face, urging to succumb to his grip. “Caleb, listen to me,” he murmurs. “Don’t…don’t do this to yourself. I’m not going to make it and you have to accept that.”

Tears sting in his eyes. Has he truly fallen this easily? It was only a matter of days. He’s fallen so hard for him, this man, this artificial being made in a lab. He hadn’t felt this hopeless in his life, more than when he’d been trapped behind glass. He fears sickeningly for Ren’s fate more than he’d ever been for his own.

Ren bores into him. “I may not have known you for very long, Caleb Smith, but I know you have an enormous heart. And it would be sublime spending an infinite amount of days hearing you in my head and pointing at the stars. Carrying you in my arms, listening to your real voice and your laughter.” Ren’s eyes slip shut, legs shifting. “Kissing you. Making love to you.”

“Ren,” Caleb whimpers.

“But it just can’t be. I knew what had to happen if I was to bring you home, which is why I won’t let you fall as I’ve fallen for you—”

“Then we’ll turn around,” Caleb interrupts. He doesn’t recognize himself. Ren came along and changed everything, shifted everything. He’s a maddened mess. “We’ll go back to Nathan’s. You shouldn’t have left and I shouldn’t have let you. I was only thinking about myself, _fuck_ ,” he grovels, squeezing his eyes shut.

Ren gapes. “You would do that?”

“Yes!” he cries. After Ren—after everything—he would do anything.

The android’s countenance softens into a revering, wholehearted smile. “I am…so grateful that you would do that for me.”

“Then let’s do that,” he nods, feverish with desperation and the shock from the river. He can’t do this without Ren. He never could.

“Caleb, I’m on my last pair of batteries. I thought that what batteries I had would be enough to see you to safety. I am so, so sorry I won’t be able to make it to the end.”

The cave whistles with the passing gust, skating across the exposed flesh of Caleb’s face, hands, and feet. Ren’s synthetic skin burns with comforting, precarious warmth under Caleb’s trembling fingertips. The fire behind him laps waves of heat around the thin cave, log snapping sharply in the newfound silence.

But Caleb doesn’t feel any of this, just his heart breaking all over again. This is true despair. Even if Ren shut his heating function off, by Caleb’s count he’d need at least seven more to make the trip back. How tragic that Ren is the only being who could make such a trek on foot through the wilderness, braving cliffs carrying Caleb in his arms, shielding Caleb from torrential blizzards, storming icy rivers for Caleb’s vulnerable body—but won’t be able to make it without power from Nathan’s house, from the only generator of its kind.

“I’m so sorry Caleb. This isn’t your fault. I see such sadness in your eyes that should never be there,” Ren says, swiping away an errant tear striping Caleb’s red cheeks.

Caleb uses all his strength to pull Ren in for a kiss, tongue and teeth nipping at Ren’s smooth, resilient lips. Ren tastes clean and unsullied like the crisp winter air of the mountains they’ve seen entirely too much of. Nathan’s mountains around his citadel and cradling his green forest, sealed by wild rivers and glaciers. He was never meant to get this far, not without Ren. He wouldn’t be alive if not for Ren. He needs Ren to know how much he’s grateful, how much he cares, how much he needs him to be alright.

It takes Ren a short while to overcome his hesitance, but he surges like a brutal avalanche, tugging Caleb close by his waist and tonguing into his mouth. He fills Caleb up with his deep moans, parting Caleb’s thighs to fit in between them as closely as he can.

Caleb has never been with a man. Like most boys and most young men, Caleb has entertained the thought but never acted on the urge, identifying as straight since he knew what straight was. But his body sings when Ren touches his skin with his broad, impossible hands and situates him where he likes with his impeccable strength and groans against him with his vibrating, sonorous drone.

“You’re the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Ren whispers into his skin. He trails a hand against Caleb’s ribs, down to the bush of blond hair framing his filling cock. “Caleb, I want to make love to you. I tried to restrain myself but I just can’t any longer,” he groans. Tentatively, Ren fondles his cock in his hot grip. Thighs quaking, Caleb bites his lip. He’s never wanted anyone as much as he wants Ren right now. He’d do anything Ren asked.

“I-I want it to,” he shivers, thrilled and terrified. “But I’ve never done it like that before. You’ll have to show me.” Caleb pushes impending doom far from the forefront of his mind, focusing on Ren’s hot touch against his hardness.

Ren nods into his neck, kissing and tonguing a fleshy earlobe. “Lie back for me,” he murmurs. “Hold your knees to your chest if you can.”

Completely putting his trust in Ren, Caleb complies. The icy air assaults his bare ass but Caleb doesn't care. He relishes the feeling, being open and pliant and at Ren’s mercy. Ren towers over him, running his hot hands on his exposed flesh.

Ren parts his thighs and gets his hand on his cock, dwarfed in Ren’s thick fingers. Every part of him is large, from his nose to his body to the dramatic swell of his cock, significantly more endowed than Caleb’s average one. The same cock that's merely moments away from claiming Caleb’s body. Caleb is counting on it to rip him apart, anything to imprint Ren on him, inside him.

“There is lubricant in the medical kit,” Ren bows his head, lapping Caleb’s navel.

“Of course,” Caleb snorts, as usual thinking of Nathan’s devilish habits. “I just need you on top of me. I'm so cold.” Caleb’s green eyes are wide and wet, needy for whatever Ren can give him.

Ren sinks his weight on Caleb’s lean frame and steals another passionate kiss, hips grinding together. Caleb’s never known such a sensation, being withered and malleable underneath such a godlike being. Moaning, Caleb hangs his thighs spread far apart, body crying for more attention.

“You've never been taken by a man?” Ren asks, though it's more of a claim than a question.

Frantic, Caleb shakes his head. “I want it, though. Please,” he groans, bucking up into Ren’s solidness. Ren’s hips are insanely hard, synthetic muscle rippling under every stretch of skin. His cock nudges along Caleb’s. A hot, hot lick against him, sliding with Ren’s gyrations.

Satisfied with Caleb’s answer, Ren twists for the lubricant. Caleb eyes him patiently from his recline as Ren squirts some on his fingers, heart beating out of his chest. The hot finger finds his hole. Nothing’s ever been inside him but he watches porn, he understands the mechanics of both straight and gay anal sex.

Unyielding, Ren’s long finger breaches him. Petting him from the inside. He scrapes his teeth against his lip, frowning at the strange sensation.

Ren bores into him with awe and reverence. He hooks his finger upwards, gently fucking him with the digit like he's done this a thousand times. But Caleb knows he's never done this, instead relying on the information stored in his search engine mind.

A spark lights inside him, from Ren’s hot fingertip and into that hidden, virginal bud he'd never dared touch himself or have anyone else touch. When Ren touches him there, he feels like this was where he was meant to be touched. Ren was meant to feel and manipulate him from deep inside. His eyes lose focus, throat spasming around whimpers.

“You're incredible,” Ren praises. His engines whir to a heated interval. “You're the last thing I want to see.”

Agony lances his heart. “Just keep going,” Caleb cries. Ren obliges, entering another finger. It burns beyond bearing but Caleb needs more. So he begs for it until Ren adds a third finger, widening his body for the impending fuck of his lifetime. Ren moves his fingers in and out and the burn is potent, but there's a heat there that he's never felt. He's hungry for something only Ren can give him.

The fingers expel and Caleb gasps in discomfort, but his eyes plead for more and that's all Ren needs to see. Ren pins his thighs apart and anchors his hardness to Caleb’s stinging hole. He's unimaginably gorging hot at the crux of his manhood—it pierces Caleb irreparably. Ren sinks inside as slow as his mechanics allow him, monitoring Caleb’s pained grimace.

“Caleb,” Ren murmurs low, dark hair a curtain enclosing him in his heady stare.

Caleb’s lashes flutter, stricken speechless at the all-corrupting, drowning fulfillment which encroaches his heart.

Ren seats in him fully, craning their mouths together. “I'm inside you,” Ren tells him. “Caleb, I'm inside of you,” he repeats, tongue diving deeply to punctuate his vow.

“Yes,” he whimpers, tightening his aching legs around his hips. Caleb claws at Ren’s scalp, urging him to move with a wiggle of his hips.

Caleb’s eyes boggle as Ren’s hips pull in and out, utterly impaled on Ren’s heat. His own cock bobs needy against their stomachs, flushed between the surfaces of heat. Ren fucks like he was made to, deriving pleasure from Caleb’s confused, thrilled cries. He knows where to aim. Deep and painful and unequivocally marking, then shallow and staccato and lighting Caleb’s nerves like a flint.

Ren wracks his body with rough, inhumanly brutal thrusts and Caleb fucking loves it—the hot plain of his abdomen smacking against Caleb’s eager cock, the low groans Ren delivers into his mouth, the perfect, perfect burn enveloping his body like an overactive electromagnetic field.

Caleb comes with a cry, squirting around his navel and Ren’s abdomen. He outright screams when Ren’s cock assaults his nerves through it his orgasm, hips canting his hole around the searing heat.

Seizing Caleb’s pliant thighs, Ren fucks once, then twice, bursting inside of him until his release trickles outside Caleb’s abused hole.

At Caleb’s alarm, Ren shudders. “It’s a special formula of ejaculate. It's designed to evaporate within a few minutes,” he assures, a bit ashamed that he'd lost control and fell to his simulated biological imperative of seeding and breeding.

But hygiene is the farthest from his concerns. “No, no. It felt...I can't describe how that felt,” he breathes, relishing the slick, used channel that Ren has morphed his body into. He pulls out, sloshing his release on the blanket.

Caleb tugs Ren over him, cradling his back so that they are plastered together with Caleb’s sweat slick skin. “How long do we have?” Caleb asks, tears strangling his words.

Ren answers with a kiss. “Let's get you back in your clothes.”

“Ren, dammit, tell me the truth.”

The clothes have mostly dried by now, warming by the fire after being wrung out by Ren’s fists. Ren ignores him, heating the clothing in his charged hands.

“Please. After everything.” Caleb sits up, Ren’s release slicking down his legs.

Ren’s hands still on the clothing. “Caleb, if you follow the line we’ve been walking, you'll be safe in a matter of days. You have enough food and water. You're not far from freedom.”

Between his legs, Caleb stings from their rigorous lovemaking. But he pays no mind to the ache, far too concerned with what unknown doom will befall Ren. “Ren,” he scoots closer. “How long?”

The android turns, meeting his eyes. “I don't know. Could be a day. Maybe less.”

There it is. Caleb palms his eye sockets, sickened with panic. “How could you do this to yourself?” he accuses. “You knew this would happen and you just—” He chokes down his betrayal. “I can take you back to Nathan’s house. I can carry you like you carried me.” This cannot be the end. Driven by his heart, Caleb crawls to Ren beside the fire.

“Listen to me, Caleb.” Ren cradles Caleb’s face, pulling him close. “You must promise me you'll go to Alesund. I know I lied to you. But you have to know I did this all for you. So you could go home. I did this so you would be safe.” Ren kisses his pout away, slippery sweet tongue moving inside him. Caleb treasures the sensation of being filled.

Pulling away, Ren tips their foreheads together. He's returned to his normal temperature now, thrumming with his even chill. A new kind of tiredness wilts his capable form. Ren struggles to keep his eyes open before Caleb’s sorrow, but they glint with underlying persistence. “I love you.”

A fresh surge of tears clouds Caleb’s vision. He's turned inside out, wrenched by a new kind of feral despair. He can't lose Ren. There has to be something he can do.

Ren ushers him into his clothes, from his boxers to his jacket. Caleb helps Ren into his clothing too, smoothing the fabric over the breadth of his chest. Ren's movements snag as he zips it up, disjointed. He's weakened beyond what Caleb’s seen in any android, let alone Ren. Ushering him to the blanket, Ren sags to his knees and lies on his side.

“You need your strength. Sleep. I'll be here when you wake up,” Ren murmurs. He pulls Caleb into his arms.

Caleb sets his head of Ren’s chest, listening to all the noises beneath his synthetic skin. Whirring, purring, and pulsing, accompanied by an odd drone he's never heard before. Heart in his throat, Caleb sinks into the embrace, staring into Ren’s face until his body claims his consciousness.

 

\--

 

The second Caleb awakens he can feel the shift in the living world. As if all light has been eradicated, the last star swallowed. Leaving the sky bathed in black.

Ren’s eyes glaze corpselike and dim. In complete denial, disbelief, Caleb brushes trembling fingers over Ren’s cheek. It greets him with the bleak iciness of a bed of snow. Face twisting, Caleb lays his head on Ren's chest.

Silence. No thrum, no purr, just the hollowness of death. Caleb closes his eyes, hot tears leaking. After indulging in countless long breaths, he sits up on a weary elbow and eases Ren’s lifeless eyes closed. They whir in protest and hush when stilled, like the crank of a hand-powered generator.

A faint scraping pierces the stillness. When Caleb sits up, an asymmetric shadow silhouettes the glow of dawn. His wounded heart finds the courage to thrum with renewed terror, eyes bleary with tears.

The figure toes into view. A wolf, haggard with advanced age. Meekly, it steps over the fizzled out fire. Caleb clings to Ren’s limp body, mechanical joints stirring as Caleb rearranges his limbs as if all his powerlessness can protect him.

Dark, canine eyes bore into his, dewy and sullen. Breathing huskily, the wolf pads closer. All the body language of a common senior dog walking in a park. After a moment, it tucks itself at Ren’s other side.

Caleb crawls over to the bag, forcing himself to zip it closed. The wolf hasn't moved. It's fallen asleep.

 _I'll come back for you,_ Caleb vows, silent so as to not disturb the wolf. _I'll bring you home._

 

\--

 

The day drags along a howling wind, carrying Caleb along the hard set path Ren had carved for them. Through a rocky valley, violently cut stones glittering in the high hung sun. He keeps Ren’s cave a pinpoint in his memory.

The evening closes with a gentle snowfall. His heart aches with droning loneliness. Somehow he manages to start a fire, longing for Ren’s embrace. He falls asleep counting the specks of embers flying up to meet the stars, connecting the constellations, Ren’s voice in his head telling him the end of another story.

Another day begins and Caleb scarfs down a fistful of granola and a quarter of his water bottle. God, he's never missed anyone or anything as much as he misses Ren.

Another day begins and he wakes up to a screeching of geese barreling overhead. Caleb moves on, maintaining the bearing Ren instructed. He holds onto Ren’s pinpoint, where the forest intersects the river, in the fold of the cave beneath the white striped mountains. Right on the fall line where the river drops to a rocky falls.

Caleb’s ankles and shins throb with every step, the bag of supplies and Ren’s dead batteries bruises his shoulders, but he maintains his footfalls. He pushes on.

He surmounts a lofty hill, nearly tread-less shoes slipping in the frozen dirt. Reaching the top, the height greets him with a broader scope of the world around.

The bottom falls from Caleb’s stomach. He bores into the field at the base of the hill. Three bulbs of colors, two red, one yellow. Hot air balloons blooming high towards sky like towers, baskets parked in the field.

Desperately, Caleb scurries down the hill, worn Converses skidding and scraping. Once the hill flattens he sprints to the colony of balloons. Trying not to trip on his bumbling feet.

“Hello?!” Caleb shouts to the small crowd of fliers. They're perched around a bonfire, forking in their dinner from tin dishware. “Hello! I'm lost! Can I get some help?”

The tallest one stands up, greeting him with a salute. It's an older man with a full black beard. The man shouts back in a foreign language, Norwegian or Swedish, Caleb can't be sure. Presumably it's a greeting, friendly enough.

“Do you speak English?” Caleb asks, panting in the frosty air.

“You American?” replies the man in a thick accent, setting his dinner down on a mat. The crowd around them ogles Caleb, not bothering to set down their dinner.

“Yes,” Caleb gasps. Thank God he can understand him. “I am lost. I've been hiking for days.”

“You come from there?” the man nods to Caleb’s path.

“Yes, I did.”

The man chuckles something to his friends in his native language, and they snort in response. “American billionaire? You get lost on your own land?”

They must be referring to Nathan and the infinite acres of his estate. “Oh, no. That's not me,” he shakes his head.

The bearded man raises his brows. “Town is ten kilometers from here.”

Ten kilometers?! He could make that in less than a day with time to spare. He could be on an airplane back to Long Island by tomorrow. This nightmare could finally be over.

Instead, Caleb exhales, knees creaking against the impossible winds. “I don't want to go back to town.”

“Oh?”

“My friend is injured. I left him far beyond the valley and I need to take him back to his house. I was visiting the billionaire. My friend lives there.”

Brushing his hands on his knees, the man paces closer, genuinely interested in what Caleb has to say. “Not hospital?”

“No, um—he has a private hospital. It's actually on the billionaire’s estate. I need help to save him. I'll pay you. I have money,” Caleb pleads.

The man laughs. “We have money. How else you think we afford to travel in big red balloons?”

Of course. Why would these people help some random American wandering the Arctic Circle? All his life he’s had to protect and help himself, not relying on anyone or anything. Until Ren came along. But he can’t think about Ren right now. He’s alone. How could he expect these people to be any different?

Zipping up a pack, the bearded man discusses something with his comrades. All but wringing his hands, Caleb wallows in uncertainty.

“I will help you.”

Caleb smiles, so incredibly grateful. “Seriously? In the balloon?” he gawks, because he's a complete idiot. From what he knows about hot air balloons, there isn't any steering method or speed control.

“Hell no! We will take the plane,” the man grins.

Surely enough, on the other side of the largest balloon is a small plane with a narrow nose, huge wheels, and two engines. Caleb laughs bewilderedly, and the man nods in enthusiastic agreement.

The man tugs Caleb aboard. “This plane is a spotting plane to guide our balloon trips. I assume your friend is less than two thousand kilometers away? Otherwise I might have to bill you,” he tells Caleb through the headphones pinching his skull.

“No, he's in a cave along the river! Between the two peaks of the snow striped mountains. It's right before the river gives to the fall line. His house is much farther.”

The man nods. “I have seen copters land past the mountains, flown by American pilots.”

“Yes! That’s where we need to be,” Caleb shouts elatedly. He can do this. He’s gonna bring Ren home.

Caleb learns the man’s name is Magnus and he sold his videogame design company a few years back. He spends his winters braving the Scandinavian wilderness with his family. Magnus has to tell Caleb to shut up—not unkindly—in order to get him to stop thanking him and focus on giving directions.

They circle the spot Ren and he had argued at, skimming the tree tops with the plane’s wheels. They land at a nearby grassless field. Magnus taxis the plane until they are as close to the general area of the cave as he can get.

“I cannot leave plane or it will burn too much fuel to restart engines!” Magnus shouts.

Caleb agrees to get Ren, grateful Magnus won’t be going near him. He’ll ask too many questions about Ren’s deathlike rigor. Ren’s not dead. Caleb just needs to get him home.

Restraining tears, Caleb gapes into the mountains around him. There are too many directions, too many obstacles. He doesn’t know how to get to the cave from this side of the forest, only how to leave it. He’s lost again and neither the stars nor the mountains, nor Ren is here to guide him.

Until a grey mass breaks the tree line. It’s the haggard wolf, eyeing him patiently. They remember each other. The wolf backs into the forest. Tentatively, Caleb follows.

Caleb’s heart pounds, allowing himself to be lead into the wild by this predator. It’s only a mere moment before the trees give to a stone wall—then to the cave where Ren healed him, where Ren made love to him. Where Ren lays down to rest.

“I’ve got you,” Caleb sobs, no longer afraid of the panting wolf. It reclines on the other side of the cave, lolling its aged head. Caleb heaves Ren by his shoulders, dragging him in the snow. Ren’s as heavy as a man. Somehow Caleb expected him to weigh as heavy as an armored tank. Adrenalized, Caleb drags Ren’s body with vigor, hauling him through the snow to the plane.

Magnus releases the boarding ladder. Together they haul Ren’s body up. Once aboard, Magnus frowns solemnly, embracing Caleb’s shoulder with his palm. “I am very sorry about your friend.”

Caleb hangs his head. He’s sorry too, but Magnus is sorry because he thinks Ren is dead, that he died waiting for rescue. He did die. He died for Caleb. But Caleb has a chance to change that. “I need to bring him home,” he tells Magnus. “To the estate.”

“Are you sure?”

“Please,” Caleb begs.

Magnus pilots the plane into the sky, soaring to the spot he's seen American helicopters land and unload their pallets and passengers. It takes almost two hours to reclaim the land Caleb and Ren covered, land Ren had carried him in his arms.

“Caleb, you sure about this house? This is where you want to be?” Magnus asks once they circle the landing strip of grassy field.

He's sure. He's never been surer of anything in his entire lonely life. “Yes. And thank you so much for your help. I don't know how I could ever repay you,” he says, near tears with elation, relief.

“Don't blame yourself for your friend. That's how.” Magnus speaks of a double meaning, the way a man speaks of his own plights, tempering his own guilt.

Magnus sets his plane down on the field. Caleb’s right a where he began, stepping off an aircraft, wrought with uncertainty and adrenaline. Together they ease Ren down the steps. Caleb shakes Magnus’s hand and bids him farewell. Just as swiftly as he came in Caleb’s life, Magnus departs, sailing over the mountains.

He’s alone with Ren now. Setting the duffle on the side to grab later, Caleb hoists Ren by his shoulders and drags him along the river. It takes a painfully slow chunk of time but he pushes on. He’s so close to getting Ren back.

He finally approaches Nathan’s lair, activating the front door with the keycard. Everything is just how they left it—piano music echoing in the spotless glass hall, designer furniture bracketing the living room with indefinite permanence. Kyoko’s forgotten body, strewn aside like garbage. He vows to give her a proper burial, along with all the other dismembered androids.

Whimpering with exhaustion, Caleb hauls Ren down the basement stairs leading to his room. The empty room illuminates and Caleb laughs, excited beyond compare to be reunited with Ren again. Hoisting Ren one final time on his charging bench, he props Ren up. Cradling his ice-cold face, praying for some sign that he’s recharging.

After several minutes of nothing, no change, no indication, Caleb’s face twists around his panicked tears. Would Ren have had to have enough juice in order to properly charge himself? Desperate and exhausted, Caleb wraps his arms around Ren’s neck, sniveling into the dirty sweatshirt on Ren’s shoulder.

Miraculously he hears a soft ping. The panel behind him lights up with a percentage bar. 0%. A minute passes. 1%. Another minute. 2%. Caleb gasps, laying a kiss to Ren’s dead lips.

An idea strikes him. Making sure Ren is balanced, Caleb dashes for the door, the closest bedroom to shower and shave. To blow-dry his hair, dress in his own clothes that he left in his suitcase. He wants to look good for Ren upon his reentry into the land of the living. By the time he finishes and runs to rejoin his recharging android lover, he blanches.

Ren’s room is completely empty.

The panel reads 15%. Ren must have regained enough battery to be able to wake and wander. Surely he couldn’t have gotten far!

“Ren!” he shouts, irrationality goading him as if he’s trapped in a paradoxical nightmare. As if somehow after everything, he failed.

He rounds the corner—and is immediately greeted by Ren’s hulking form. He doesn't have time to praise him with kisses and confessions of his love when Ren shoves him into the nearest surface, the cold glass wall. Instead of the soft, soulful compassion and reverence burns hot, anger and confusion.

“It’s me. It’s Caleb,” he urges, slackening in Ren’s steely grip.

Stiffening, Ren bores into Caleb’s alarmed wet eyes. “Caleb?” he mutters. Reminding himself of his purpose.

Nodding disjointedly, Caleb dares a palm to Ren’s locked jaw. “You’re safe now,” he tells Ren. “I brought you back home.”

Furious light flares in Ren’s eyes. “What happened? I thought—I thought we were—” He cannot formulate a response because the outcome makes no sense to what logic he’d anticipated.

Heart thrumming, Caleb finds his words. “You lost power. I stumbled on a family of travelers and their pilot helped bring us back here on their plane so I could recharge your batteries. And we could be together—”

Caleb’s mouth snaps shut when Ren swivels around to assault the opposite glass wall. He punches, punches, punches the glass until it splinters, filling the hall with the tumultuous explosions of his enraged fit. Caleb’s socked feet abandon traction, his knees weakening with shock and folding him onto the floor. The destruction of the glass is of no comparison to the shattering of Caleb’s heart. He cowers, at a complete loss for words.

When Ren finally stills, the glass is warped and fractured.

“You should have left me,” Ren tells the floor.

How could he? When he’s never had someone care for him as Ren had? Never had such important of a purpose than to love and be loved by God’s and mankind’s greatest creation? Caleb claws his hands into fists, tongue strangling his most private desires and feelings.

“You had a plane, yes?” Ren growls. “You were close enough to go home. You were so close, and now you are right back where you started. How could you do this to yourself? What the fuck were you thinking? You could have been home. You could have been _home,_ Caleb.” Tears shine in Ren’s artificial eyes, pleading to the human to answer him and tell him why he’s done what he’s done.

Caleb turns away, unable to face Ren’s harrowing anguish.

But Ren crawls into his space, hands and knees, wounded, withered. “Why?” he repeats, desperate to understand.

Forcing his lips to cease quivering, Caleb meets Ren’s eyes. “I wanted—” his throat swells, hot tears choking his confession. “I wanted you to be alright. I wanted us to be together. I realized that I don’t care where we are, if we’re here, in the woods. I don’t care as long as we’re together.”

Tight like a livewire, Ren freezes. Fact checking every one of his micro expressions, cross-referencing every verbal inflection, analyzing the very formula that lead to Caleb’s decision. Crumpling, he comes to an improbable, stupefying, miraculous conclusion. “Caleb,” Ren murmurs, cradling his jaw. He kisses their foreheads together, swiping Caleb’s tears with his thumbs. “You give me life.”

Overcome with passion, Caleb snivels, teeth scraping against his tear-salted lips. He’s always been such an ugly crier. “You give me life, too.”

Ren smiles, but he can’t keep it long before it sinks to a self-depreciating grimace. “I’m sorry I freaked out. You must think I’m a monster.”

“I could never think that.” It’s the truth. It’s always been so.

“Why do you want to be with me? I’m not—I was made in a lab. You barely know me.”

Caleb laughs, airy and free. “I was made for you.”

“You’re not a computer simulation,” Ren accuses. “You’re a person. You have a life.”

“I’m not talking about Nathan’s experiments. Before this,” Caleb waves a hand, setting it on Ren’s tangled hair. “Before I came here—that life was the simulation. When I met you, it was like all this bullshit finally meant something.” He’s been lonely. His entire fucking life. “No one’s ever treated me the way you do. I crave to see things like you see them.” Caleb moves closer, hopelessly attracted. “I wanna be in your world.”

Ren’s mouth latches onto his, tonguing inside. Pure sensory perception, pleading to memorize all the codes and patterns which compose Caleb. “I just want you safe.”

“You're the only person who's ever protected me.” Besides his parents, no one ever took much of an interest in him. Ren cares for him because he wants to, not because he thinks he's a physical incarnation of his lost love. He and Ren are the lovers of this story now.

Caleb kisses him again, worming into his arms. “I love you,” he tells Ren. Words he's never spoken aloud and meant so fiercely. He wants to be taken again. He wants to be taken completely. Ren pushing, rearranging him from the inside out.

A vivacious groan vibrates into Caleb’s mouth and Ren seizes him by the waist and into the air. Caleb immediately brackets Ren’s hips with his knees, natural and organic. They were made to be in each other's arms.

Ren moans, kneading the modest swell of Caleb’s ass. He parts their lips. “I should probably finish charging,” he smirks.

“Can I join you?”

“I'm afraid it'll be terribly boring. I just sit there twiddling my thumbs.”

Caleb beams, nuzzling Ren’s perfect cheekbone. “I might have an idea of how to pass the time.”

“And what's that?”

Adrenalized at the ideas of new and exciting ways he can pleasure Ren, Caleb squeezes his thighs around his torso. “There's an awful lot of room between your legs. Room enough for me to sit and—” Caleb cuts himself off with a giggle when Ren enthusiastically sprints to his room.

That night Caleb falls asleep in one of the last undamaged bedrooms, fully charged Ren encircling his body. Ren watches him the entire night, cataloguing his patterns and shapes and noises.

The next day they put Nathan’s dismembered androids to rest. Ren does most of the digging. They lower each AI into the ground, Ren taut with remorse for the lives lost. Kyoko is lowered into the final grave, chrome of her mangled jaw catching the light as she slumps into the dirt.

“What happens now?” Ren asks when they settle the graves. The courtyard is dotted with fresh upheavals of dirt.

Reaching around Ren’s hips, Caleb leans into his side. “We could spend tonight under the stars.”

Ren kisses Caleb’s sweat perspired forehead. “I'd love that.”

 

\--

 

Around two weeks into their new life together, they see that Nathan has scheduled food drops—mostly alcohol—packaged at his front door. Fine foods, healthy foods, indulgent foods. And the coffee, Caleb adores Nathan’s priceless array of coffee.

It’s a month later when Caleb stumbles upon Ren fiddling in the lab. He sneaks up behind him, wrapping his arms around Ren’s substantial, shirtless mass. Ren freezes, embarrassed to be caught.

“What’s that?” Caleb asks, trying to decipher what Ren is working on.

Ren sets the conglomeration of casing and circuitry down. “I know you said you are happy here, as I seem to ask you entirely too much, as you often remind me.”

“Mhm,” Caleb snorts, nuzzling Ren’s neck.

“And you said you like the free food and the fact you don’t have to pay rent or work,” Ren smirks, “and the sex…”

“The incredible sex,” he smiles into Ren’s grinning cheek.

“And I know you said you don’t want to leave—”

“I don’t want to leave _you,_ ” Caleb interrupts.

Ren swivels in the stool to kiss Caleb’s waiting lips. “And I could never leave you. But I started a project for a device that might solve my charging problem. Help me be more mobile. So maybe, one day, we won’t have to be trapped here.”

A lifetime’s worth of self-confidence issues worries Caleb’s brow, only to be kissed away by Ren’s loving touch.

“Not that we are trapped in any manner of speaking,” Ren assures. “I just want you to have it all. I don’t want choices to be taken from you. I want you to be able to do what you want, go where you please. See the world with me at your side.” He smiles into Caleb’s face, gentle and loving.

“It means so much you would do that for me. Of course I would love that, Ren,” Caleb beams, his happiness in Ren’s arms knowing no end. “Though with your new charger, could we still do our favorite charging activity?” he asks suggestively.

Comically, Ren’s eyes widen. Caleb’s gotten quite good at pleasuring Ren while on his knees, swallowing his addictive release that shows no sign of ever tapping out. “Well, I don’t see why not,” Ren says, and Caleb laughs and laughs.

One day they’ll join the rest of the world. But as for tonight, Caleb and Ren are content to map out their own world under the stars and between each other’s warm bodies.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for reading! Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did :)
> 
> [Here](http://ballvvasher.tumblr.com/post/154450667544/a-little-collage-i-made-for-my-caleb-smithaikylo) is a little graphic/manip I made on my tumblr!


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